Pimples! Acne! Eczema! Weight
gain! Hairy limbs! Bad breath! Myopia! Bad teeth!
Bad teeth?
Yup.
I have never seen a kid with a
bad set of milk teeth. Day's were alright.
Permanent teeth are something else.
Every single one of Day’s
permanent teeth is a little bit off-course. They grow, not straight up, but
like weeds, each one willy-nilly following the course of an imaginary sun (not
even the same sun), and they are far from aligned.
Neither are they solid white.
They are, like mine, yellowish and patchy and ugly.
I wore braces for a while,
chiefly to rein in a slightly horsey set of teeth.
KK never had issues apart from
a Madonna-ish gap-toothed grin.
But Day. He has to deal with
this:
That little bud is his new permanent front tooth, which is not just slightly off-course, its headed for another place altogether (for the record, he told me to post the picture of his mouth so "maybe people who read your blog will have some ideas". About what, I don't know).
I think it's called a cross-bite.
Once the front milk drops, the
permanent will continue growing out, but it will fall
behind the lower set of teeth when he bites down.
It’s a strange one and it
looks mighty weird. But it is also rather fascinating. I keep asking him to
open his mouth so I can study it.
He has shown his badge of honour
to his friends – “So gross!” says Michael - and calls himself a shark, “because
I have a second row of teeth behind like a shark, waiting to replace the first
row”.
The dentist refers us to the
orthodontist because this requires a specialist.
I look at KK: The bill, the
bill!
But as he says, and I agree, a
smile can make or break a man.
3 comments:
Hi Shimian,
I was at a school alumni talk last year with an orthodontist who favours early intervention. Message me on Facebook if you want to know more.
Cheers,
Pearlyn
That permanent tooth behind the milk tooth? It may move outwards once the milk tooth drops. My eldest boy had many of these types of permanent teeth growing in before the milk teeth are even loose. He is 15 now and he has a fine set of teeth.
Hi! Hanni here. DS had his permanent tooth growing behind his milk tooth just like that. Thankfully his kid dentist didn't intervene (at least until his next appt). We encouraged him to wriggle the milk tooth loose. When it did fall off, we then encouraged him to push the permanent teeth forward with his tongue. Right now it has moved further front, almost aligned just like how the dentist said it would. You might want to read up on shark teeth too, it's really called that.
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