Today was a day that Iz had anticipated for quite a while; I wouldn’t say she looked forward to it like the Father-Daughter dance or her birthday. She definitely knew the day was coming; however, this past week she had been sitting on the fence between the “this is no big deal” backyard and the “lose sleep over this” front yard. The growling and salivating dog with the spiked collar who was occupying both yards was the orthodontist.
After her last visit to the dentist, the dental tech recommended that Iz see the orthodontist soon. The dental tech handed me a sheet with all of Iz’s problem areas circled. In addition to lady bugs and sharks, things that scared Iz, she had to now be fearful of crowding, a cross bite, and a gap due to thumb sucking, which our dentist abhorred.
The dentist had told Iz before that should really stop sucking her thumb; the same dentist , who I never really cared for, also told Nathan the same thing. Iz only sucked her thumb at night, and it seemed like something she would outgrow just like Nathan did. (Nathan didn’t suck his thumb; he was more creative and skillfully sucked the ring and middle fingers of his right hand.)
When Nathan first saw the orthodontist, the orthodontist said that it was no problem that Nathan sucked his fingers. Nathan seemed embarrassed at first and then relieved. Shortly thereafter, Nathan just stopped sucking his fingers. And, this was why I really liked this orthodontist; he told Nathan is was okay and perfectly natural to comfort himself in this way.
Iz was aware of the orthodontist from tagging along on Nathan’s visits to him. I think she always associated his visits with pain. I don’t know why because Nathan usually portrayed the visits as an inconvenience that cut into his after-school X-box time; perhaps Iz wrongly translated “pain in the butt” as “pain in my mouth.”
This morning, Iz was scheduled to go off to the school vacation program for a few hours. As I ran around gathering her things and putting together my cycling necessities, she walked up to me and handed me a piece of white paper. I asked, “What’s this?” and she said, “It’s a ticket.”
She was right; it was an “orthodtist tikit.” (I thought that the spelling of orthodontist was particularly good considering she’s only 7!) I asked, “Why do I need this?”
I thought I was given a violation because I was “speeding” her off to the orthodontist’s before the official “orthodonture” season had begun. She said, “It’s to remind you.” Note to Self: Iz just might be my future partner in Law & Order crime given the tickets she’s always handing out.
I was encouraged that she was reminding me to take her and not standing there having a coughing fit to persuade me to cancel her appointment due to one of her usual imagined illnesses. I hadn’t forgotten, and I told her I would pick her up at tooth hurty. (Okay, that was lame, but I need to have a lame joke in here every now and then.)
When I picked her up at 2:30, I gathered up her belongings. The first thing she asked was, “Are we going now?” I told her we were, and, totally changing gears, the next thing out of her mouth was, “Mom, someone got earwax on my iPod!”
I asked how someone got earwax on her iPod. She said that it was either Katherine, Taysia, or Amanda, because they had all borrowed it. She said that Miss Aly had tried to clean it off; and, I was not looking forward to seeing that mess.
When we got in the car, Iz said, “Here, Mom” and flung her iPod over into the front seat. Miss Aly hadn’t done a great job cleaning the ear bud as I suspected, though I didn't blame her. I took a deep breath, found a napkin, and then I wiped the rest of the offensive orange mess off the ear bud; I then said, “Iz, friends don't let friends borrow iPods, okay?”
As we drove off, she asked, “Do we need to go on the highway?” I love the way little kids think, well, until adolescence ruins the little kid way of thinking! Iz didn’t ask me how long it would take to get there; however, I knew the highway indicated to her whether it would be a short or a long trip.
I told her that we didn’t need to take the highway and reminded her it was a few minutes away and a place she had been before. She then asked, “Is the doctor a boy or a girl?” I said, “He’s a boy,” to which she answered a very even tempered “Oh.”
There ended the orthodontist questions. It was back to “Is your Mommy in heaven?” and “Where are Rover’s ashes?” Just before we entered the driveway, she shouted, “There it is! I remembered, Mom!”
After we checked in, we sat in the waiting area. Iz whispered to me, “Mom, are you coming in with me?” I told her I was.
She seemed relieved and then looked at the receptionist and said, “Look, Mommy. That lady has braces.” I told her that sometimes adults get braces, too. And, like clockwork going from the issue at hand to basic instincts, she asked “Can I go to the bathroom?”
After her bathroom visit, we sat a bit longer in the waiting room. Iz didn’t seem interested in the TV (Hannah Montana) or the magazines; she was totally entertained and amused by the activity going on around her. When a dental tech came out and announced “Jeff” to the room, Iz said, “How come girl doctors keep coming out?”
In less than a minute, another “girl doctor” came out and announced “Isabelle.” We followed her into a spacious office with an exam chair in the far right corner. Once we sat down, the girl doctor went over all the things the doctor would do and look for with Iz.
She also explain the doctor’s incentive program; each visit, Iz would receive a wooden nickel. She said, “When you get enough nickels, you can exchange them for things like American Express gift cards, beanie babies, or iTunes gift cards.” She then sked Iz, “Maybe you don’t have an iPod though?”
Iz said, “Yes, I do!” The girl doctor said, “Well, you’re more advanced than me!” Then Iz replied, “But it’s covered with earwax!”
I cringed for a moment. Another thing to love about this age is TMI (Too Much Information). The girl doctor laughed, and before I could say anything, the doctor entered the room.
After he played several games with Iz, he asked her to climb up into the chair. He began to raise it up, and I saw her eyes get wide. When he stopped it, he began to drop it down so her head was lower than her body and she squealed; he pretended he had made an error, though it was obvious he was playing with her again.
He took a look in her mouth. He started to randomly say letters and numbers to the girl doctor like “A-1 through A-6” or “B7 through B-12, top and bottom.” If I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn he was dictating his lottery numbers to her. But, I figured he was just commenting on Iz’s crowding, cross bite, and open space.
He then asked her to hold up her hands. Alas, I knew where he was going with this. He said, “I’m just looking for something that you may be putting in your mouth,” and then he grabbed onto her right thumb and said, “I think this is what it is, right?” She confessed.
When he was done, he lowered Iz back down to Earth. She hopped off and sat in the chair, and she was allowed to pick a toy from his toy chest. He sat down in front of his computer and asked her when and where she sucked her thumb; she had to direct her attention away from her new mini-squirt gun, which I knew she thought would make a nifty concealed weapon with which to sabotage Nathan at 8am on Saturday mornings, to answer his thumb sucking questions.
He then explained to her why she had her space and showed her how thumb sucking affected her teeth. He dragged a slider across the bottom of a picture of a mouth, which illustrated how more sucking meant a bigger space. I was beginning to think that he had changed his stance on thumb sucking when he said, “It’s good that you only suck your thumb at night. You’re halfway to stopping then.”
I was relieved, and he told Iz that he wanted to check her in 5 months. After he left, I asked the girl doctor, “So, he doesn’t think she should stop sucking her thumb, does she?” She said, “Oh, no. He believes that it’s okay for children to suck their thumbs or fingers until they’re 8. He doesn’t believe that you should prevent a child from doing that.”
I was relieved; I didn’t want to have to put something bitter on her thumb or make her wear a sock over her thumb at night. I liked this doctor all over again today, because he believed that kids should have their little comforts, even if it meant he had to spend more time fixing things to accommodate them. Certainly, I knew the thumb sucking might make her mouth more costly; however, it was worth it to me to let her keep whatever gave her comfort, especially on those nights when she might dream about ladybugs or sharks. ♥
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