The Tooth Fairy

TKzilla · July 2013

I fully believed that there was a Tooth Fairy when I was a little girl. It seemed legit - tooth falls out, put it under your pillow, wake up to money. The first time I lost a tooth, my dad told me to put it under my pillow next to a penny so the Tooth Fairy would know that I'd like to receive money (was there another option? WTF dad?) The next morning I was shocked to find ONE WHOLE DOLLAR under my pillow. It was the best day ever.

This morning I read a status on Facebook from a friend that I used to babysit for. Her daughter's first tooth fell out while she was visiting her grandmother in another state. The Tooth Fairy will be visiting her at grandma's, but she will also leave a $20 under the child's pillow at her house, too.

My jaw dropped. $20 from the Tooth Fairy for a six-year-old? What the hell?

Thoughts on this? What do you do (or would you do) for your kids if and when the Tooth Fairy comes?

buddysmom80 · July 2013

Jeez the tooth fairy inflation is crazy. I used to get a half dollar coin for every tooth that fell out!

I don't have kids, but I've heard stories where kids will get xbox games under their pillow from the tooth fairy or GC to Toys R Us. I guess when I have kids, I'm going to keep with the whole half dollar tradition. No offense to your friend, but $20 is crazy!

AddieCake · July 2013

Holy cupcakes, that is some hefty inflation!

When I was little, my grandmother gave me this bottle of perfume from Avon shaped like a fairy,and she had a little nylon bag she held. It was big enough for a quarter. THAT's what I got from the tooth fairy. A quarter!

I will have to check with other parents when I have kids to see what the going rate is for the tooth fairy.

cbrown828 · July 2013

I have noticed this trend too! I think I got $1 per tooth. FI's niece has been getting $5 bills under her pillow. FI and I are both against the "special snowflake" brand of parenting that seems so common anymore. Our kids won't be raking in the dough over losing teeth.

tiny speck · July 2013

Holy wow! I got a dollar. And not for every tooth either, only a few times when I lost my first teeth!

PandPMeant2B · July 2013

Agreed that $20 is insane. I'm pretty sure I got $0.25-$1, depending on the tooth (I think molars were "worth" more for whatever reason my parents made up). I don't have kids, but my sister does. When her girls lose a tooth, she writes a note (or has someone whose handwriting they won't recognize write one) from the tooth fairy and leaves it with a trinket from the dollar store; usually a bracelet or small toy. The girls get way more excited about things like that than they do about money.

NerdyLucy · July 2013

I think I got $1 per tooth.

If I ever have kids, they're getting a MAXIMUM of $5, but likely less than that, maybe $1-3 depending on the tooth?

Definitely not $20.

Did anyone see that Modern Family episode where the accidentally gave Lillie $100 for her first tooth? Cam thought he was giving a $1 bill.

AJuliaNJ · July 2013

I got a dollar or two. One time my mom forgot and I bawled my eyes out.

TKzilla · July 2013

wittykitty14 · July 2013

I got a buck-ish per tooth, with the exception of my last one. My last tooth, the fairy gave me a $5 and a beanie baby...yep. Hell, I was 9, I loved it!

I won't be giving my kids any more than one dollar a tooth. I figure there's no point, because they didn't do anything to earn it. Idk. DH and I will figure that out when we start having kids, and then make sure that whatever we do, it's consistent among all our children. I'm still not 100% sure I'm going to go along with it. I'm the parent who's going to accidentally wake up my kid and ruin their childhood swapping the tooth out. I don't want to risk scarring them for life!

PickleJuiceSlurper · July 2013

My first tooth I got $10, then all my others I got $5, I guess I had a generous tooth fairy.

s-aries8990 · July 2013

I got a book and $1 for my first one (the book was The Real Tooth Fairy by Marilyn Kayne and @wittykitty14 - I think it would help you out! It's about how the TF dresses up like parents so the kids don't get scared). I think I got a $5 for some molars, but it was $1 every other time. Sometimes we had to wait an extra night because the tooth fairy was broke lol

$1-5 is all they get!

SuperMinty · July 2013

My teeth went for about $1 - $5, depending on the fairy's generosity. We don't have kids yet, but I think $5 - $10 is fair. You can't really buy toys for less than that now, so I can't imagine a 6 year old getting terribly excited about quarters or a dollar.

CLoGreenEyes · July 2013

So, I could go ahead and be the mean mom who doesn't allow her kids to experience these things - tooth fairy, Easter bunny, Santa, etc. I feel super-awkward about lying in any case...but hell. I did enjoy those things as a kid. But yeah, I definitely got coins. When I was at my grandmother's and grandfather's house, the going rate per tooth definitely went up a bit.

But not to $20! I can see myself doing a dollar per tooth, and I love the idea of sprinkling glitter on it to make it more legit.

I was so mad when I found out that all of those things weren't real. I was maybe 8. I found my tooth in a little envelope on the table the day after the tooth fairy supposedly came and picked it up. I interrogated my mom about the existence of the Easter bunny and Santa Claus shortly thereafter.

Peaseblossom55 · July 2013

I would get a dollar or two I remember but wow talk about inflation. My niece just lost some teeth and she got $5 a tooth. That seems a bit crazy for just a tooth, I won't even go into discussing $20 for a tooth.

PandPMeant2B · July 2013

SuperMinty said:

My teeth went for about $1 - $5, depending on the fairy's generosity. We don't have kids yet, but I think $5 - $10 is fair. You can't really buy toys for less than that now, so I can't imagine a 6 year old getting terribly excited about quarters or a dollar.

Disagree. In case you missed my post, my 6 year old niece LOVES her presents from the tooth fairy, which all come form the dollar store. You CAN buy toys for less than $5-$10 that kids love just as much as anything else. And they DO get excited over quarters and dollars; they get excited at the thought of saving up for something, just like Linger said.

AddieCake · July 2013

I just can't see rewarding kids with large amounts of cash for something that just happens naturally.

RamonaFlowers · July 2013

My Tooth Fairy paid $2 per tooth.

And I took my sweet-ass time about losing all of my baby teeth. I lost my last baby tooth the week before my Junior Prom ...and the Tooth Fairy still left me my $2, lol.

All of my other siblings lost all of theirs by 5/6th grade (I still had baby teeth left when my brother that's 6 years my junior had all of his second teeth), and my parents didn't want to cheap out on me just because I took so long losing teeth, lol,

harper0813 · July 2013

Holy crap! $20?!? Ha, I won't love my kids THAT much.

I got $1-2 dollars. What amazed me was that my dad (he was totally the tooth fairy - he LOVES holidays) never woke me up when exchanging the quarters for the tooth. I had a little pouch that I'd put the tooth in. And not once did I catch him. I'm a light sleeper, too!

Once he left a note (I recognized his handwriting, but for some reason I'd always known that the tooth fairy didn't exist, despite being a desperate believer of Santa Claus) saying, "The tooth fairy needs to go to the bank. She'll be back tomorrow night!" I found it hilarious, even at 8 years old.

bakerie · July 2013

I think I usually got a dollar. There were quite a few times when I had to get teeth pulled and my parents bought me something nice from the toy store, I think just because that was so much more unpleasant than them falling out naturally and they felt bad for me.

kjlamb · July 2013

I got a dollar for the big teeth-like the front teeth. I got less as the teeth got smaller. one time i only got a penny-but I was still excited about it!

Teddy917 · July 2013

I will probably do a dollar. And I'll be consistent. My parents gave my younger bros more than me when they started losing teeth. By that time I knew the truth and I was mad that I had gotten quarters and they got two bucks MINIMUM.

mstallae · July 2013

bakerie said:

I think I usually got a dollar. There were quite a few times when I had to get teeth pulled and my parents bought me something nice from the toy store, I think just because that was so much more unpleasant than them falling out naturally and they felt bad for me.

THIS makes sense to me

If you get a tooth pulled I say get something extra little for them (ie a toy) and ALSO have the tooth fairy leave them $1 or $2 max (I live in Canada so we have $2 coins I wouldn't go to bills as we start at $5)

side note: has anyone seen THIS??

http://www.therealtoothfairies.com/registration - there is also one for boys where its a tooth elf or something... weird..

NYCBruin · July 2013

I think I got between a quarter and a dollar per tooth. I always saved up my money. I actually was such a good saver that when I was a kid, I was often the only one who had cash on hand in the house. This was pre-ATM days. So if my dad was going out of town on business and needed cab/tip money, I was the go-to person. I ran what I now realize was a bank, where I would give my parents cash in exchange for a promise for them to repay me with more cash.

And my kids will be getting a small token amount of cash. They should learn how to save money, too. The tooth fairy visiting is a good way to start teaching this lesson early.

Blue & White · July 2013

I had a generous tooth fairy, $3 for each tooth and $5 for molars lol. My tooth fairy wasn't a dentist, although the pay scale kinda implies it

kryan32 · July 2013

@wittykitty14 - there are tooth-fairy bags you can hang on the door-knob so the fairy doesn't accidentally wake up your kid. We had one for dd because she slept in a loft bed and I wasn't tall enough to reach her pillow without using the ladder, which made too much noise...

Sad story - FIs daughter lost her first tooth at her mom's house. She was *so* excited about the tooth fairy coming, but the tooth fairy didn't come that night or the next night or the next night. When she came to our house,we told her to bring her tooth with her but she was already convinced that the tooth fairy didn't like her and wouldn't come. We told her to check her room at our house - sure enough the tooth fairy had left her a note that she "got lost and couldn't find Mom's house so she would come to our house tonight." And she did - she left a gold dollar coin, which thrilled SD. After that she brought all her teeth to our house until she moved in with us full time...

Blue & White · July 2013

@ramonaflowers my mom still has some of her baby teeth lol. She didnt have any adult teeth backing them up. Does that mean the tooth fairy has to come if she needs dentures someday?

[Deleted User] · July 2013

I got 50 cents, maybe. $1 for the molars... like @PandPMeant2B, my Tooth Fairy decided those were "worth more".

So, I still have a baby tooth. Does that mean I'll get $50 if it ever falls out? (Though according to my dentist that's unlikely as its roots are apparently super long.)

HobokensFury · July 2013

I used to get about $5 or whatever amount of singles the tooth fairy had in her wallet at the time.

RamonaFlowers · July 2013

One good thing about my second teeth taking so long to come in was I was in braces FOREVER(they had to wait for each new molar to come in)...while that sucked at the time, I was 16 when I finally got them off, and the final X-rays revealed that all 4 of my wisdom teeth not only existed, but were completely impacted.

So a month later, I went and had all 4 pulled at the same time, and my mom kept me home for a week to recover, most of that time I spent so zonked out out Percocet that I didn't didn't care how crappy I felt, lol. Now I'm in my mid-late 20s and most of my friends from high school are starting to have problems with theirs and are posting things on FB about how miserable their wisdom teeth are making them.

And I'm just sitting back thinking "Thank the sweet baby Jesus my X-rays caught that shit before mine ever had a chance to give me any grief." I feel so bad for anyone that actually has to deal with getting them removed as an adult. It has to suck majorly

kmmssg · July 2013

Why should a kid get enough money to buy a toy because they lost a tooth? That is insane to me. It is another lesson in entitlement.

I got a quarter back in my day. I was always geeked and, no, I couldn't buy a toy for a quarter (although, I could score a candy bar back then). What makes me sad is when one kid's parents give 10 or 20 bucks a tooth and their friend gets a buck or two. Does that mean the Tooth Fairy doesn't like you?

I have a Tooth Fairy story for you I heard quite some time ago on NPR. By the time I was done laughing my stomache hurt.

Here it is, paraphrased. (Set this scene in your mind: Little Amy has just come home from spending the night and Sarah's house).

Amy: Sarah lost a tooth yesterday

Mom: Oh, how about that. Did the Tooth Fairy come last night?

Amy: (cue awkward silence) Um...yeah, kinda

Mom: What do you mean, kinda?

Amy: Mom - I know who the Tooth Fairy is.

Mom: (playing her cards beyond brilliantly) You do?

Amy: Yeah. It's Sarah's Dad!! He is the Tooth Fairy!! I saw him put the money under her pillow

Mom: (even more freaking brilliantly) Yes, Amy - you are absolutely right - the Tooth Fairy IS Sarah's Dad. This is some really grown up information here and he has worked so hard to keep this a secret. I have to ask you to never tell a soul so he can keep his doing his job so well. OK?

The lady (Amy) said for YEARS she thought her friend's dad was the Tooth Fairy! I love that story.

The Tooth Fairy

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