The Tooth Fairy is alive and well!

[MissTaken]

Last night, as we drove home from a birthday party, my son exclaimed, "My tooth is almost ready, mom!"

"The Tooth Fairy will come, then!" said my daughter with the wide eyed innocence of childhood. She has yet to lose a tooth and looks forward to the day when she finds a few quarters under her pillow and a gaping hole in her mouth.

"There is no Tooth Fairy," drawled my son. Even though it was dark, I could imagine is eyes rolling and his mouth in a a half sneer.

Then, the fight was on.
"Is so!"
"Is not!"
"Is so"

Finally, hearing enough of the childhood banter and desperate to preserve my daughter's innocence and belief in magic, I blurted, "There is a Tooth Fairy."

"No, mom, there isn't. How can there be a Tooth Fairy? I have never seen him."

Well, for a seven year old, concrete in his ways, seeing is believing, usually. I began with a line of questioning concerning the things he believed in that he had never seen.
"Do you believe in love?"
"Do you believe in planets?"
"Do you believe in God?"
"Do you believe in sharks?"
"Do you believe in oceans?"

I continued to list the things that he had never seen and for many of them, for the sake of continuing the debate, he found some small way to say, "I believe because I saw..."

Of course, telling me he had seen sharks on television wasn't an acceptable argument as he has known for a long time that movies and television are not often or always "real."

"Do you believe in dinosaurs?"

The conversation seemed silly, but finally, he resigned himself and said, "This is getting hard!"

Then, he got very quiet for the rest of the ride home. Since then, I have been thinking about several aspects of this time with him.

~When do we stop believing and why?
~I miss that magic of youth, belief in the unseen and the all knowing parent who makes everything so. Do you?
~Am I doing a disservice to my children by encouraging the belief in magic and especially with regard to the Tooth Fairy? The Tooth Fairy holds no spiritual meaning for us, doesn't characterize any lesson that I need my children to learn or understand. The Tooth Fairy just Is.
~What are the intangibles that we, as adults, do believe in? Money, Power, God, Love, Hate, Hope, Futility, Fate, The Afterlife, Hell, Love How do we know any of these things exist? What do we base our beliefs on?
~How fragile are our beliefs? What does it take to make us question our faith in these things?

For now, The Tooth Fairy exists and is only waiting for Little Man to finish his work on the tooth in question in order to make an appearance.

 

[JerseyBoy]

just remember...if somehow you forget to put the $ under the pillow tonite, you have to pay double tomorrow!

 

[Gilly Bean]

My oldest will be 7 in April, and we cringed while waiting for Christmas to come, just waiting for her to say she didn't believe.


But, she didn't say it! She is safe until next year, at the very least. :-D


She hasn't delved into the tooth fairy or easter bunny theories yet, so they are safe so far as well.


My husband said he can recall only being 7 or 8 when he suddenly decided that Santa didn't exsist. Help came in the form of the tag's santa wrote out. Why where they in mom's handwriting?

We decided that next year, I'm taking the tags over to a friend, and having her write up a ton of them for us.

I can't recall when I stopped believing. Probably around 2nd or 3rd grade.

 

[Mad_Jack_Rabbit]

All part of the fun of growing up.

My eldest (nearly nine) doesn't really believe in the tooth fairy but my youngest does (7 1/2). When my eldest says 'it's really you and mom,' I just say, 'Tooth fairies are more fun. If it was left up to me and mom we'd probably just forget or not bother.'

Niether of them believes in the 'Tangle fairy' who tangles the hair of girls who have been naughty and so explains why they have so many knots in there hair when I drag the brush through it.

 

[MissTaken]

A gratuitous bump

Thank you for your replies.

Yes, teh change is ready whenever he gets beyond the fear of the final big tug!

 

[LovetoGiveRoses]

I actually have a picture of the tooth fairy. I've been considering selling it to the Star newspaper for a couple million $...but have been enjoying keeping it under wraps.

 

[LovetoGiveRoses]

I'm looking for it, might not be able to find it.

 

[J.B.]

she's real I know she is! I met her once.

 

[MissTaken]

she's real I know she is! I met her once.

*giggles*

But do you beleive in the things you can't see, touch, taste, smell or hear?

 

[J.B.]

yes. it's called faith.

 

[ithaqua]

~When do we stop believing and why?

We stop believing in things like Santa, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter bunny because they are not usefull in the real world, and they are generally held to be false by the adults in our lives.

You teach your children about these ficticional characters as a means of measuring how well you are doing at protecting them from the *real* world as children. The sooner the child stops believing in Santa, the more exposure they have to the harsh realities of life, the less protected they are.

 

[ithaqua]

*giggles*

But do you beleive in the things you can't see, touch, taste, smell or hear?

No, I scarcely believe in things that I can sense. There are, however, several models of the world that include things that can not be sensed. One of these models is Science. You may as well ask me if I believe in atoms. Is this faith, some would say yes.

There are several religious models of the world as well.

I tend to have faith in the ones that are useful in day to day life, and not in the ones that are not.

So as far as the Tooth Fairy is concerned, I would continue to believe in them until the quarters quit showing up under the pillow, or some more plausable explanation was espoused.

 

[intrigued]

Miss T, I see no harm in allowing a child to be a child, regardless of whether it's Santa, the tooth fairy, etc. They grow up fast enough, face enough shit day to day as it is, and that innocence is precious.

And I ditto what J.B. said about faith.

 

[Rubyfruit]

I believe in magic!

I love the wonder and delight of childhood. The discovery. The magic.

My son is losing his first tooth. The tooth's state of wiggliness is a topic for conversation nightly now. He wants to yank it out so he gets that first visit from the tooth fairy.

 

[someplace]

Just wait until your children become adults and don't want to hurt Mom's feelings because she still believes *nods* in Santa and the fairy and the bunny and all that. And I'm okay with that...


*grin*

 

[J.B.]

I did that for a while. My mom would look so excited when she hand me that gift from "Santa" I couldn't tell her I knew.

 

[English Lady]

I believe in santa, the tooth fairy, easter bunny and the loch ness monster!!!

 

[J.B.]

Nessi!

Of couse I believe in her! Visiting Loch Ness is on my travel to do list.

 

[The Heretic]

~Am I doing a disservice to my children by encouraging the belief in magic and especially with regard to the Tooth Fairy?

No. As you point out this is not an issue of morals or anything like that - it is just a fairly harmless little game. Rather than pointing out all the things that your son believes in yet hasn't experienced directly, I might take him aside and ask him what harm it does for your daughter to believe in the Tooth Fairy for a while. I would then tell him that they will both grow out of believing in the Tooth Fairy soon enough - while they are young and innocent they should revel in that innocence and youth; they will never get it back once it is gone.

Besides, humoring your parents by professing belief in the Tooth Fairy is a good way to get money under your pillow to spend on goodies.

 

[batter]

Tooth Fairy???

i am ready!

bring her on!!! LOL

should be worth a buck or two each easily!
Hugs!

 

[Thrillhouse]

My thoughts on faith perfectly crystallized: "Faith is believing something you know ain't true." (Mark Twain)


Story for ya, MissTaken:

http://www.theonion.com/onion3902/skeptic_pitied.html

FAYETTEVILLE, AR—Craig Schaffner, 46, a Fayetteville-area computer consultant, has earned the pity of friends and acquaintances for his tragic reluctance to embrace the unverifiable, sources reported Monday.


"I honestly feel sorry for the guy," said neighbor Michael Eddy, 54, a born-again Christian. "To live in this world not believing in a higher power, doubting that Christ died for our sins—that's such a sad, cynical way to live. I don't know how he gets through his day."

Coworker Donald Cobb, who spends roughly 20 percent of his annual income on telephone psychics and tarot-card readings, similarly extended his compassion for Schaffner.

"Craig is a really great guy," Cobb said. "It's just too bad he's chosen to cut himself off from the world of the paranormal, restricting himself to the limited universe of what can be seen and heard and verified through empirical evidence."

Also feeling pity for Schaffner is his former girlfriend Aimee Brand, a holistic and homeopathic healer who earns a living selling tonics and medicines diluted to one molecule per gallon in the belief that the water "remembers" the curative properties of the medication.

"Don't get me wrong—logic and reason have their place," Brand said. "But Craig fails to recognize the danger of going too far with medical common sense to the exclusion of alternative New Age remedies like chakra cleansing and energy-field realignment."

Eddy said he has tried repeatedly to pull Schaffner back from the precipice of lucidity.

"I admit, science might be great for curing diseases, exploring space, cataloguing the natural phenomena of our world, saving endangered species, extending the human lifespan, and enriching the quality of that life," Eddy said. "But at the end of the day, science has nothing to tell us about the human soul, and that's a critical thing Craig is missing. I would hate for his soul to be lost forever because of a stubborn doubt over the actual existence and nature of that soul."

Gina Hitchens, a lifelong astrology devotee, blamed Schaffner's lack of faith on an accident of birth.

"Craig can't entirely help himself, being a Gemini," Hitchens said. "Geminis are always very skeptical and destined to feel pain throughout life as a result of their closed-mindedness. If you try to introduce Craig to anything even remotely made-up, he starts going off about 'evidence this' and 'proof that.' If only the poor man were open-minded enough to stop attacking everything with his brain and just once look into his heart, he'd find all the proof he needed. But, sadly, he's unable to let even a little bit of imagination drive his core beliefs."

Perhaps the person who pities Schaffner most is his brother Frank, a practicing Scientologist since 1991.

"It's bad enough when someone has the ignorance to reject Dianetics in spite of its tremendous popularity," Frank said. "But Craig isn't even willing to try a free introductory course. Scientology has the potential to free humanity from the crippling yoke of common sense, unshackling billions from the chains of century after century of scientific precedent, and yet he still won't give it a try."

"I realize that Craig seems very happy with his narrow little common-sense-based worldview," Frank continued, "but when you think of all the widely embraced beliefs that are excluded by that way of thinking, you have to feel kind of sad."