Thursday Thirteen #22

Thirteen Things about teeth, in honor of my son's first loose tooth that is about to fall out any minute!

1. Children’s teeth begin forming before birth. As early as 4 months, the first primary (or baby) teeth to erupt through the gums are the lower central incisors, followed closely by the upper central incisors.
2. Teeth usually come in pairs. The bottom front two teeth typically show up first, followed by the top ones.
3. Not all doctors agree that symptoms of teething are diarrhea and a fever although most parents notice a tooth erupting after these symptoms are gone.
4. Although all 20 primary teeth usually appear by age 3, the pace and order of their eruption varies.
5. Permanent teeth begin appearing around age 5, starting with the first molars and lower central incisors. This process continues until approximately age 21.
6. When children are 6 or 7 years old, they begin to lose their baby teeth, and permanent teeth start to break through the gums.
7. The back molars fall out between 9-14 years of age.
8. Adults have 28 permanent teeth, or up to 32 including the third molars (or wisdom teeth).
9. Dentists say that the minimum time you should spend brushing your teeth is 2 minutes twice a day.
10. Eating sugar, as you probably already know, is a major cause of tooth decay. But it's not just how much sugar you eat - when and how you eat it can be just as important to keeping teeth healthy.
11. No one really knows what prompted parents to begin putting the tooth under a child's pillow or when the practice of leaving a gift became widespread. However, it probably began to be part of our American folklore sometime during the late 19th century.
12. A less-common variant is for the child to place the tooth in a glass of water beside the bed. Again, in the morning, the tooth is replaced with a coin.
13. You can have your child write to the tooth fairy here .

And here's my son's tooth this morning, the loose one with the big tooth behind it. I wonder how much the tooth fairy will leave him??