Tooth Fairy: On strike

Since when does the Tooth Fairy recognize inflation in her payouts? All these years (all three my oldest has been alive) I thought she was more like the newspaper industry - constant wage freeze or in a state of furlough.

That's apparently not the case and the good ol' Associated Press showed me the truth with this gem they posted Aug. 30. (I was going to write about this on Friday, but was too busy worrying about my kids acting like kids to focus on something way above my grade level).

Nearly $4 a tooth? I remember being thrilled beyond my wildest dreams when I found a dollar once for a lost molar. A MOLAR! Here I've very honestly been figuring about $.50 per tooth when we start popping them out of our kids' heads like Pez candy ... This Tooth Fairy, though, is ready to hang up her wings over this newest report.


I want to know where our priorities as parents lay. If in two years, when Josie starts kindergarten, kids are more concerned with how much cash the Tooth Fairy left for her first incisor or think that information is more important than her ability to recite the alphabet and do simple math, then there's an issue. What am I saying - it's already an issue.

This, from the article, kind of makes my point:

Part of the reason for the sharp rise: Parents don't want their kids to be the ones at the playground who received the lowest amount.

And this:

Visa also has a downloadable Tooth Fairy Calculator app that will give you an idea of how much parents in your age group, income bracket and education level are giving their kids, says [Jason] Alderman, [a senior director of financial education at Visa]. The calculator is also available on the Facebook apps page.

A calculator to figure out how much to leave under your child's pillow for a tooth? Really? I don't think this is what parents need. They need to teach them how to do math without a calculator, to read simple sentences like, "See Jane run," and show them cooking, baking and sewing are wonderful gifts to have that most schools no longer focus any effort on.

Parents my age already are buying their kids things like iPads, iPods and cell phones. No, not all parents my age, but enough that it's a bit unnerving, and those children's ages range far and wide, so I'm not focusing just on the 3-and-under crowd. It's not like my husband and I are broke, but I think the last thing most moms and dads want is for their kid to come home from school requesting expensive electronics just because little Bobby has one and said other kids were lame (or whatever other insult you can think of) because they didn't have one, too. The simple fact some of the rise in Tooth Fairy payout is because parents are afraid their kid will be bullied for getting the lowest amount says what exactly about our society?

It says we effing suck. We're teaching our children that if you make an assload of cash, people won't pick on you, bully you or treat you like you were never their friend anyway. It doesn't matter if the money under that pillow is for the college fund or not, the only thing children will go to school talking about is, "The Tooth Fairy left me $20!" A 5-year-old won't add in the fact that the money isn't technically theirs, ever, because it will go directly from a savings account to whatever institution of higher education they choose to give it to in 13 years.

Money does not fix everything, but as a society, a community, we consistently instill these false values in our babies.

Why the emphasis on adult problems with our children? Kids shouldn't be thinking about how much money they'll get for a tooth when they're 5. They should be thinking about how far they can ride their newly un-training-wheeled bike without tipping over or if they'll be allowed to go play in the rain.

In honor of Labor Day last weekend - I know I'm a day late, but I was watching my 21-month-old stomp in the mud puddles yesterday instead of focusing on my Internet audience - I'm committing myself to give not more than $2 for molars and no less than $.25 for the other little teeth that come out when it's time. Despite the demographics, my education and our income bracket will not decide how much my kid gets for her teeth.

This Tooth Fairy is officially on strike.