London - The dentist was blunt about it. “These two,” he said pointing at the smallest pair, “will need braces. The other two won’t.”
“Run,” I wanted to shout at my youngest. “Go abroad, get a new identity. Join the Foreign Legion. Anything but the braces.”
But my husband says I always overreact at the dentist, so I kept quiet.
“This boy,” the dentist continued in the manner of humourless policeman, “has had too many fizzy drinks. It must stop.”
“But he hasn’t,” I want to say, but the dentist is so stern, and I’m having such vivid flashbacks to my own childhood, that I am rendered mute. I worry if I open my mouth he’ll stick one of his scary instruments in it.
I take the children to the dentist as a job lot. When both parents work, four separate appointments are never going happen. I’m not sure our busy dentist favours this approach.
They crowd into the small surgery and peer into the mouth of whoever is being examined at the same time as the dentist, even though I shout, “Backs against the wall and don’t speak” to those who are not being prodded in the chair of doom.
“This girl,” the dentist continues brusquely, “has a mouth too small for her teeth.”
I don’t know what to say because he is referring to Mabel, aged three. Some would argue she has a mouth that is too big for her boots, but I let it slide. Besides, she is lying on my lap in the chair. I am defenceless.
In my head I am 13 again and four years of hideous dental treatment, involving barbaric round-my-face braces, lies ahead.
No one thought to give me gas and air, while they extracted the teeth that were in the way in my “too small mouth”. I’m filled with fear on the brink of a boyfriend-free adolescence.
When the nurse says: “Will a Princess sticker make you feel better?” I say yes, even though she is asking Mabel.
Mr Candy usually takes the children because he knows I’ll find any excuse not to go. “Oh it’s a full moon. That’s a bad omen we can’t possibly go to the dentist,” I once argued.
“Unless the dentist is a werewolf, you’re going,” he replied. He’s got perfect teeth.
So two of our offspring have his oral genes, the other two sadly have mine. Our dentist knows the fearsome foursome well — the last time they came he quizzed my son, now aged seven, on how many sweets he ate.
“None today,” Henry said as three Ferrero Rocher wrappers fell from his pocket. It was 9.30am. Our dental record still hasn’t recovered.
But we do not have fizzy drinks in the house, so I am baffled by the latest accusation — until the dentist tells me milk is just as bad, and so is fruit juice. Darn it, we are bang to rights on that one.
On the way home I inform the kids it’s one apple juice at meal times from now on and then water afterwards. “What?” the older two girls growl outraged. “Because of him we can’t have juice? That is so unfair.”
This coming from a 12-year-old who hides Haribo packets under her pillow and a ten-year-old who should go to AEA (After Eights Anonymous).
Perhaps I have been too liberal with the sugar? But I have always worried about restricting anything — that way rebellion lies. If you make something unobtainable you just want it more. Or is that just me?
I remember hosting a birthday party for my middle child where another mom told me that on no account must her son have sugar. “He simply isn’t allowed it,” she said.
Well, that little boy made it his mission to feast on some of the good stuff that day - and I found him hiding in the plastic Wendy house quaffing marshmallows like it was his last day on Earth.
And what do the sugar police recommend as an alternative treat, I wonder? When I check out the ‘How I Quit Sugar’ blogs for ideas one suggests making your kids eat porridge for breakfast. I wouldn’t make our ancient, blind dog eat porridge for breakfast, let alone inflict it on my offspring. So we’re in a state of “candy control” right now (see what I did there). Intake is monitored.
When I dropped my son at school after his appointment the wonderfully chirpy school secretary reminds him that braces these days are pretty fashionable and come in multi-colours.
“Cool,” he adds. “I think I will make mine out of a rainbow loom.”
Daily Mail
* Lorraine Candy is editor-in-chief of Elle magazine.