Losing Teeth at Age 5..normal? - Page 2

[s_kristina]

My dd will be 6 in January. At this point she has 2 adult teeth and according to her there are 7 more that are loose. We just had her to the dentist for a cleaning on Monday and neither the dentist of the hygienist thought it was a problem that she had adult teeth and others loose.

[clane]

Yes, my nephew just lost 1st tooth and he turned 5 in Sept. Dentist said it is common.

[Adele_Mommy]

You have already gotten a ton of responses that losing teeth at 5 is both normal and fine, so I will address the other part of your question.

It is actually a good thing for your dc to wiggle the loose tooth because that will help it fall out faster. You can just let it fall out on its own, but a loose tooth can be painful and extremely annoying to the child when it stays in and stays in.

For my dd (she is now 7 and lost her first teeth at 5) whenever she complains about a loose tooth we ask if she would like to try to pull it. Sometimes she says yes, sometimes no and we respect her decision. If she wants to try, my dh holds the loose tooth with a washcloth or piece of gauze and then gives a gentle pull. Or he can get a good grip and then she can jerk her head back, in effect pulling it herself. If the tooth doesn't seem ready to come out then we stop and try again another night. Most of my dd's teeth were pulled, one came out when she was eating an apple, and one came out shortly after an unsuccessful pulling attempt.

[s_kristina]

I totally forgot about the wiggling part in my post sorry. Personally it grosses me out to watch kids wiggling on loose teethe, but I just tell dd to mess with her teeth in her room or I go somewhere I don't have to watch. There were a couple of girls in the dentist's office ahead of dd and the hygienist told their mom to encourage them to wiggle their teeth as they had adult teeth coming in behind the baby ones. It sounded like they had other problems as well with their teeth, but that part stuck out in my mind. I'd never heard that advice before, but it makes sense.

[canteloupe]

Replying because I updated in the 1st post. Thanks.

[twilight girl]

Just wanted to add again, that yes, it's normal. My DD is 5 1/2, and one day I saw something in her gums and said "hey, come here!" She had not one tooth, but a tooth and two molars breaking through the gums, and one loose tooth, which just fell out the other day. She has one other loose tooth as well.

[LeBoof]

5 year old son

My 5 year old had his first two loose teeth at about the same time back around mid July (lower fronts). He had to go in to have a cavity filled and the dentist asked if we wanted to have him pull it or not. As it was his first experience with a loose tooth we said no. Hehe...He didn't lose the first one until a few days before Halloween. It wasn't even the loosest of the two. He finally lost that one 2 days ago (Nov. 11). He inherited my family trait of long roots even in the baby teeth. In his case having any kind of dental work done, even a cavity being filled, takes extra medications and is more trouble than it's worth. This last time took an anesthesiologist on hand, a full physical, a letter from his cardiologist stating that he was ok for the procedure. I'd much rather just let them fall out on their own unless it's really becoming a problem. By that I mean some of the problems I had as a kid where the baby tooth never came loose, but the adult tooth was trying to come in anyhow.