help with an injured/loose tooth in almost 5 yr old

[sesa70]

My dd just told me that she 'hurt her tooth' this afternoon.

So she has a shoe lace she really likes to play with (dog leash, rope, etc) and it had a knot, so she put it in her mouth with the knot behind her teeth (mouth closed) and was pulling in an effort to get the knot out of her shoe lace. Apparently this is when she hurt her tooth.

I didn't know when it happened (around 4 this afternoon) and she only told me about it maybe an hour ago. I looked at her mouth, and one of her bottom teeth is loose. When I touched it she said it hurt, but there was no blood or swelling or anything that looked abnormal, other than the loose tooth. She will be 5 next week.

I am a little worried since this is the first time something like this has happened. How could she pull hard enough to loosen her tooth? Do I need to take her to a dentist right away? Is there anything they can do for her? Has this happened to anyone else? What do I do? LOL!

[ABO Mama]

If it's a baby tooth, you don't need to do anything about it. DS fell down stairs and knocked out one of his baby teeth, and the dentist said that the adult tooth would come in just fine.

[LynnS6]

If it's a baby tooth, it could have been a little loose already and then the string in her mouth made it more noticable. If it's a grown-up tooth, I'd take her to the dentist. Very often, if you just leave it alone it'll re-stabilize if it's not too badly injured. That happened with ds' tooth (a permanent tooth at that!) when he knocked it.

If it's a baby tooth, a dentist most likely won't try to save it, even if it's very loose.

[Contrariety]

I would assume that any dentist would tell you it's fine and just to wait until the adult tooth grows in. She's pretty close to the age where her teeth will start falling out, anyway. My niece lost her first two just after turning five.