Well, as you can probably infer, the girls visited the dentist for a teeth cleaning. A time that we all equally dread. For them, it’s the fact that someone is putting stuff in their mouth. For me, it’s the “you need to be brushing their teeth at night. Let them do the morning”, “Didn’t you say last visit you purchased a kids’ sonicare tooth brush? If you used it, you wouldn’t have these issues”, “Do you ever floss their teeth?”. The looks of “We know you aren’t feeding your kids a healthy diet” and “Do you even care for your children?” (granted those could be a little self-inflicted). Regardless, the pediatric dentist office is not my favorite place.
It has its perks though, with the balloon animals, the toy machine, and they get to watch Disney movies the whole time. But, my goodness, it’s very short-lived when your children are sad they didn’t get the blue sticky hand toy and when the dog balloon animal’s head comes undone, turns into a giraffe, and then pops on the way home. Oh the tears, oh the yells, oh the very tired sweetheart.
The girls started going to the dentist when my oldest was three and youngest was two. When the dentist office told me that, at age three, they have the kids go back on their own for the teeth cleaning, my face looked extremely puzzled. “You want my three-year old to leave me, walk back their on her own, sit in a chair with strangers, and she’ll open her mouth for you and you can clean her teeth….without me? You’re nuts!”
And guess what, she did! My little oldest three-year old at the time walked back there so proud, so brave, with her head held up high, basically shouting to the world “I am my own person. I am capable of greatness. I can rule the land!”. Now we did a lot of prep work before that happened, and I’ll share that in Part 2, but honestly a lot of that is her personality too.
My youngest, on the other hand, had a lot more struggles with this, and that could be a little more fitting of her personality as well. BUT, like we all do, we work on it, and she’ll get there. In fact, this past week, she went back there with her older sister without me, and said “Mommy, I was scared. I was about to start crying. I felt tears coming, but I got really brave and did it.” Now that’s amazing! I was so proud of her, and I keep reminding her that she did that when she starts getting anxious about something.
Our Elementary School had a book fair last week, which just to fully disclose, I will never be writing about book fairs on this blog, because I do not love them, not even a tiny bit. However, when I saw Peppa Pig’s Dental Visit book sitting on the shelf, it’s as if music started to play in the distance, a spotlight started to shine on the cover….the room got quiet, the kids rushing from one book to the next dissipated, the parents following the kids with the looks of “get me out of here with some money left” disappeared from my thoughts.
I saw the answer to my youngest’s fears of knowing that same afternoon, she’d be visiting the dentist, and she flat-out didn’t want to! I would read Peppa to her. I’d read about Peppa going to the dentist. It’ll be a hit. It’ll be the answer to what I’m looking for. I grabbed it, paid for it, and off I left [with only about four other things much to my oldest’s dismay…we will work on gratefulness another day :)].
***SPOILER ALERT*** DO NOT READ PAST HERE IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WITH PEPPA AT THE DENTIST! 🙂
In the book, Peppa is actually not scared of going to the dentist, she’s ready to roll! However, her younger brother George is hesitant, so as I was reading, I really emphasized George’s transformation from scared to happy after his visit. We literally read this in the car, parked right in front of the dentist office. I honestly think this book helped my youngest (who is 4 1/2 years old) as any other cartoon/character would if talking about the dentist. I highly recommend doing a little leg work prior to your kids visit. It’ll be worth it!
Check out Part 2 (posting next week) where I’ll do a deep dive on how I prepared my girls for their first, second, and third dental cleaning visits. I was surprised at the regression, but back to that book…aren’t you dying to get it? The part where George’s dinosaur gets his own teeth cleaning was a real shocker! 🙂
Hope you all have a wonderful week!
SUMMARY
Product:Â Peppa Pig’s Dental Visit book
Purchase Location: I purchased at a book fair, but Amazon sells it as well.
Additional Links: Phillips Kids Sonicare ToothbrushÂ
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