The Pain of the Dentist

The nervous energy that accompanies a trip to the dentist manifests itself in my boys the way most things do - they wrestle.

And I think our dentist and all the people that work there know this. They seem to be finely attuned to the moods of children. And they have decked their office, lobby and tooth torture areas out with myriad ways to distract the kids from the impending chair treatment.

Just check out the pictures on their website and you'll see what I mean.

There is a large fish tank with colorful fish aka Finding Nemo. There is a bird aviary. There is a play room with things to climb on, things to stack, things to read, and a computer loaded with games. There are televisions playing kid-friendly programming. The furniture is soft and oddly shaped and fun to crawl on. The walls are painted with murals of big fish and sharks and octopi. The hygienists and office workers wear St. Louis Cardinal shirts.

With all of this stuff, you think my kids would be entertained for the fifteen minutes that they wait for their names to be called. But they've seen it all before - every 6 months to be exact. So they resorted to the one activity that never grows boring and that activity is driving their mother insane.

I managed to distract them a bit by letting them take pictures of the fish tank with my phone. But then they started fighting over who took more pictures and I had to take the phone away and they started wrestling again.

The (imagined?) looks of disapproval from the other parents with perfect children began when I couldn't control my boys, so I did what any mom on the fifth day of a low-grade fever with snot dripping and her nose skin peeling from incessant wiping whose husband was on the second day of a four day business trip would do. I bribed them with new Nintendo DS games.