The Tooth Doctor

Jackson went to the dentist yesterday. He was fantastic! We had to wait for a while in the waiting room with a ton of other people. There were a few toys but tons of children. He was happily playing with an orange truck when a little girl came in and asked to play with it. We've been talking a lot about sharing lately, so I asked him if he would please let the little girl have a chance to play with the truck. He looked down at the truck, I could tell he was thinking deeply about it and counting the cost, and then slowly pushed it over to the girl and said, "You can play with this." I was so proud of him! She didn't take the truck right away, but he kept repeating himself until she did.

When it was our turn to see the dentist, he walked back with me and was thrilled when he saw the chair that he got to sit in. He asked me, "This is my chair?" I assured him that it was and that my chair was the one against the wall.

The dental assistant used a mirror to look in his mouth. He sat in his chair very still the entire time she examined his teeth. He kept watching her and the other assistants as they worked. He kept asking me all sorts of questions, "What is that lady doing? She has gloves on. Is she going to take them off? Will she throw them in trash?" (The other assistant was sanitizing a chair from the previous patient.) "Do they have toothbrushes? Do they have toothpaste? Will that lady come right back?" I love that he is so curious about things.

There was another two-year-old sitting two chairs over who was screaming uncontrollably. He had just had x-rays and needed caps on his four top teeth. Jackson kept looking at him and then he said, "That little boy is crying." He seemed very concerned. I thought he might feel uncomfortable with all of the screaming, but he just sat there observing while I talked to him about why the little boy was crying.

When the dentist came and looked at his teeth, Jackson marveled at the bright light over his head.

Again, he sat very still while the dentist examined his teeth. To my delight, everything looked fantastic and the dentist told Jackson that he was marvelous.

Once he was finished, the dental assistant let him choose a toy out of a box. The toys were concealed inside balls, and this is what he picked: