Sunday, November 21, 2004

Baby Teeth and the Hierarchy of Needs

Sometimes it's fun being a parent. Kelly is in the process of losing another baby tooth, and she's obsessing over the idea that it'll fall out in the night while she's asleep. And she could choke on it. She was literally standing over the washbasin tugging it to and fro trying to get it to come loose before bedtime so she wouldn't risk this scenario.

I think I've steered her away from her nightmare scenario, assuring her that I've yet to see a recorded case of night strangulation by baby tooth. At worst, I said, she'd swallow it and never see it, or it'd fall out and roll under the bed, to be lost amidst the junk she's accumulated and refused to throw away over the last nine years. This of course led next to lawyering. If she didn't have the tooth, how could she 'extract' (heh) payment from the tooth fairy? I told her that since Jean and I knew about the tooth, we could issue an affidavit to that effect and place it under her pillow, which would be as good as a tooth. So then, Dad, what if we find the tooth later? Will the tooth fairy come and get it then?

Enough! In the nicest voice possible I explained to Kelly that while her tooth was surely bugging her, and I of all people, given my various sleep misadventures, sympathized with her, she at least had to make the attempt to sleep, given that she was a growing girl, school was tomorrow, blah, blah, blah. Then for some reason I got onto a monologue concerning the pillars of a healthy life, i.e. balanced meals, exercise, and sleep. And then, after she had agreed to try sleeping without obsessing over the tooth, we got to talking about what a person needs to live, and I spent awhile recounting Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Huh? How the heck did I get here? But she got it. That is so cool!

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