Month: December 2015

Orthodontic Headgear & Expander update

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So far, we’ve had the headgear & expander on for about 4 months. See previous post here.  It seemed to only hurt for about a week and then my daughter was fine. She has made good progress with her teeth and is almost done with this part of the treatment.

It’s taken me awhile to figure out how to turn the expander each week. Since it’s only done once a week, I feel like I have to refigure out how to do it each time. You have to hold the key in a certain way to get the expander to turn. I’ve only just now gotten the hang of it and can do it quickly. I always shine a light into her mouth so that I can see what I’m doing. The challenge is getting the key out once the turn happens since the key ends up in the back of her mouth almost chocking my daughter.

Challenges:

  •  Getting the minimum 12 hours of wear a day is hard. My daughter tends to sleep only 9-10 hours a day, which means we need to make up the extra time during the day. I forget about this. When I do think about it, it’s at a bad time, like right before a meal. My daughter also resists wearing it during the day. (She’s 8) She hasn’t taken the responsibility upon herself to remember. I am pretty sure that not wearing it often has slowed our progress.
  • Food gets stuck in the expander. I found a medicine syringe that my daughter uses to squirt the food out. It gets some, but I’m pretty sure there’s more in there. This grosses me out thinking about all the bacteria living in her mouth. It feels unclean. I can’t wait to get the expander out.

We might not be able to afford water!

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bathtub

I caught myself telling this lie to one of my children.

Backstory -I get very frustrated when my kids waste water taking their bath. At times, they will turn on the water, let it run without putting the plug down, waiting for it to get hot. They leave the bathroom and then forget about the running water. Wasted water.

Other times, they will not watch the tub being filled and have it almost overflow.

Now, as a parent, I have some responsibility in this. I should be watching them. Usually, my oldest is responsible enough to do baths on her own while I spend time with the other kids or work on my own thing. However, it is not unusual for her to get distracted and forget.

So… the other night, oldest child was already in the tub, but then decided she needed more water, bringing it to a level that is really high and more than necessary. In doing so, she was also using up all the hot water for the other baths. Anyway, I notice the water height and start telling/lecturing her how we have to pay for all the water she uses, maybe I should charge her for the water usage, and then I said if you keep using alot, we might not be able to afford water. Really? That’s not true. In the grand scheme of things, water isn’t that expensive or so expensive that I would actually have to turn it off.

This got me to thinking. Why do I say crazy stuff to my kids? They probably know full well, it’s an empty threat. I get so frustrated at what I perceive as irresponsibility. In my head I’m thinking “Don’t you know?”. “Don’t you know that you need to be more responsible?” “Haven’t I told you this a thousand times?” “Shouldn’t you remember by now?”

In reality, they’re just kids. Kids do things like this or maybe it’s just my kids. As a parent, it’s part of my responsibility to teach them how to be responsible with things like water conservation. I’m sure I could do this without flipping out over the water usage and hurling empty threats.