Teeth

When I was growing up, having loose teeth was one of the worst feelings. I could never proudly wiggle my loose teeth, and heaven forbid my parents should suggest pulling them. As I consider my childhood now, I'm almost certain my children inherited their apparent SI issues from me, because in addition to the horrible sensation I remember from loose teeth, there was a long list of things that gave me the creepy-crawlies and a even a great deal of anxiety. I was very quiet about most of them (some were - are - really wierd!), but I was rather demonstrative about loose teeth, especially when my Dad insisted on pulling them (usually when they were dangling by almost nothing and I refused to eat!), and it still burns in my memory as a very traumatic stage in my childhood. Years later, when Aimee's personality really began to shine, I dreaded the day when she would begin loosing teeth. Last summer when she lost her first tooth, and then her second, with nary a tear and barely a whimper from first wiggle to the final drop, I was amazed. Since then she's lost several more - she even let Dave pull one - and only occassionally has she become bothered or upset by it. In fact, she wiggles and plays with her loose teeth almost constantly when she discovers new ones, thus speeding their demise, I'm sure. Two days ago, when she had finally had it with a stubborn tooth that was hanging by a thread, she announced to her brothers that she was going to pull it - and she did! Yesterday, empowered by her success, she pulled another very loose one, later proudly displaying to her astonished mother the prominent gap made by the missing top and bottom teeth. I'm still mystified how a girl who can't touch construction paper or look at a banana without gagging can so calmly yank her own teeth out of her head, but I'm glad for her (and for us!) that this whole process hasn't been the terror it was for me. It's a little therapuetic for me in a way as well, redeeming a little of my childhood memories. :-)
A quick aside in regard to the Lecture mentioned in my pp - I gave it yesterday morning! *sigh* Aimee woke up with a severely overdeveloped sense of entitlement, and as I was unsuccessfully trying to deal with it, the thought once again grew in my head that if I could just help her understand that what I was requiring of her was well within reason, that in fact I was really quite generous in arranging the schedule so she could have opportunities to read or play in between subjects, opportunities her friend across the street didn't have because blah, blah, blah...(as she stops listening!). Really this just stems from the big ME inside trying to be sure I look benevolent and right to another human, notwithstanding the fact that she's only 7. I was also frustrated by the fact that the 7 year-old in question was, at least in part, opposing me just for the sake of opposition - if I had an idea, it was no good, and I knew she was resisting simply because it was my idea. How maddening that is! While I love her fierce quest for inependence (and I know I shouldn't take it personally, but rather help to cultivate it in the proper channels, etc, etc.), sometimes it does wear me down, and I lose myself to the desire just to be unconditionally liked and approved. By a 7 year-old. :-)