Magical money leaves them toothless for toonies
By Jane Muller
The tooth fairy is a major source of income for kids. Not sure about the logistics of her delivery system but it’s best that little ones don’t think about it too hard. The tooth comes out, money gets delivered and that’s it. It’s some of the easiest money ever to be made.
There is that intermediate step however. It’s the step that involves the actual delivery of the cash. It’s the step that involves the parent who must remember to help out the tooth fairy with the exchange. How could a parent forget to facilitate the payment of a reward for an event as momentous as losing a tooth? Not sure exactly how but it happens and sometimes twice with the same tooth. Sometimes the tooth fairy is extremely busy and tired and distracted. She might not have toonies and loonies at her disposal. She might prefer to utilize an electronic cash transfer.
There’s still the matter of picking up the tooth but an evolved tooth fairy with access to online banking may not actually need to have the tooth. A digital image posted to an Instagram account or delivered by email could suffice.
The family can hold onto all of those precious little teeth and maybe create jewellery out of them. Such keepsakes are definitely going outside of the locket these days with everything from placenta pieces and breast milk drops being fashioned into necklace pendants. There is a bit of a debate as to whether or not the tooth fairy actually takes the teeth away. In some households those teeth emerge years later as part of childhood keepsake collections. There are no strict tooth fairy rules and families are free to draw their own guidelines.
This includes the value of a tooth. When I was a kid, we got a quarter and felt rich. Our kids got a loonie or a toonie. According to the article in our Toddler section this month, some kids are getting $20 for a tooth. The only time I heard of that was when my brother-in-law accidentally loaned the tooth fairy a $20 bill instead of a $1 bill (they were both green) in exchange for one of his son’s teeth. As there was no way to negotiate an exchange, my nephew was left to celebrate his windfall while his parents attempted to roll back his expectations of future tooth rewards.
No matter the amount, tooth fairy money provides a financial learning opportunity. There’s no magic involved in managing money and our tooth fairy feature provides some great advice for making it real for kids.
Moms making money is the focus of Carol Alexander’s feature in the Baby section of this edition. No worries, you don’t have to give up your teeth for these enterprises.
