Last week, I finally took F. to the dentist. It was well past the due date on a check-up. He is five and has been to the dentist 2-3 times before. Before you think less of me let me point out that as a baby he didn’t even have one tooth until past his first birthday. We are late dental bloomers in this family so I have a bit of a hall pass. The point is he has normal dental hygiene and has been to the dentist multiple times before.
It is not his favorite place. I’d be worried if it was. And when we got there he suddenly got very quiet and his eyes got very watery. Cut to five minutes later and he is yukking it up with the dentist–swapping stories of favorite Star Wars characters, giving high fives and eventually opening up nice and wide for the cleaning (he is a pleaser like me and wants to do what is expected of him). Basically, being the stellar dental patient and all around good kid that he is.
Here’s the other shoe you are waiting for. Four cavities. Four. I might as well be the mother who lets her child drink Coke out of his baby bottle. Here’s the thing: F. doesn’t drink soda because my husband and I don’t drink soda so it’s just not around. And F. doesn’t really eat candy. Don’t get me wrong, he digs candy when the opportunity to eat it is there but we don’t really keep it in the house and we’ve never really used it as a reward. Halloween candy languishes in its bowl until Easter when we finally dump it. He forgets about it on November 1 and I don’t bring it up. F. has never chewed a piece of gum in his short life. He brushes his teeth almost every night. (If he passes out on the floor with his Legos. I do not wake him up to brush his teeth. I deposit him into bed and relish the chance to read People magazine in peace.) So, what’s the deal? Four cavities?! One I get. Four–totally shocked. So it must be that I’m a crappy mom to allow the teeth in my sweet son’s head to rot into hole-ridden nubs.
So then comes the guilt upon guilt. Not only did his teeth rot under my watch, but now I have to take him back to the dentist where they will put a needle in his gum and put his mouth to sleep. I am now a source of physical pain for the poor child who depends on me for health and safety and who trusts me to do the right thing at all times.
And so I wonder: does he have cavities because I work outside the home? If I was a stay at home mom would I have been a better tooth guardian? Did I let him get away with insufficient tooth brushing because I was tired/thinking about the work I still had to do/paying more attention to his brother’s dental expertise/preoccupied/bored/inattentive…the list goes on.
There is probably no end to this “story” and no resolution. We will go to the dentist and fill the cavities and his teeth will be fixed and we will move on. But I will continue to wonder how he got those cavities and what I could have done better and differently to prevent them. And I will worry about all the other ways I am trying to keep him safe and where else I’m falling short. And I will continue to try to do everything in my power to protect him and be there for him.
And sometimes I will succeed. And sometimes I will fail. And that is how it has gone since he entered the world in 2005. And that is how it will go for as long as I’m here and for as long as he is my son.
