This evening, our daughter, while chewing on a caramel felt that caramel stick to the retainer on her bottom teeth and lift out.
She immediately panicked and started working at it with her tongue and her fingers. My husband came over and he carefully helped push it back onto her tooth. Even though it was reattached, she was still freaking out because, well, she felt like she knew better than her Daddy. She thought if she did not get the whole thing out it would somehow come loose while she slept and she would die. "You want me to die!!!" she howled. Exasperated, he clucked, "Of course I do not want you to die..."
Ignoring him she worked the metal piece of her tooth but could not get the other side out and off...she's stuck now because she has this piece of metal hanging out of her mouth with no where to go...Yikes!
He goes upstairs, she comes and sits beside me, teary-eyed she says, "what am I going to do now???" I look at her and sigh; "Perhaps," I say, "you should realize that when Daddy is trying to help you, he really wants to help you." "Maybe, you don't know what's best after all?" Tears slide down her face, "But I thought...." her voice tapers off, "I'm sorry," she whispers. "Maybe you need to tell him that?" I reply, "and then, ask him to help you?"
You'd think it was major surgery, but really, well, she held unto my hand and my husband, small pliers in hand works away gently at it, getting the twisted metal piece somehow bent so that it goes back into her mouth. Crisis solved - for now. Tomorrow we'll call the dentist and see what can be done.
Oh and by the way, did I mention that she isn't supposed to eat sticky things like, say, caramels? Ya, well.
So, it got me to thinking, how many times had I landed up in some kind of trouble or crisis because I stubbornly thought I knew better? Sad to say, I must admit, far too many times for comfort.
Why is it I wonder, that we seem to think that somehow we, in an area in which we perhaps have no expertise or experience, that we just automatically know the answer? Is it some sort of primal arrogance? Or do some lessons just beg to be learned the hard way?
What do you think?
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