How A Letter From The Tooth Fairy Can Help Kids Process Big Feelings: Parenting Tips
It was 8:15 on a Tuesday, I was scraping peanut butter off dinner plates and loading the dishwasher when my 7-year-old Lila appeared in the kitchen doorway, wearing her faded unicorn pajamas with the hole in the toe, holding a crumpled sheet of her dotted notebook paper. She’d lost her second front tooth three hours earlier at the neighborhood ice cream shop, and I’d already tucked the tiny white tooth under her pillow alongside the usual folded dollar bill. “I don’t just want money,” she mumbled, kicking the base of the refrigerator. “Mia got a letter from the Tooth Fairy last month. I want a letter too.”
I almost brushed her off, told her the Tooth Fairy was busy and we’d ask for one next time. I was tired, I had a work email I needed to answer before bed, and this felt like one more unnecessary thing to add to my to-do list. But then I noticed her pink cheeks and the way she kept picking at the edge of the paper, and I remembered that day at the ice cream shop. When she bit into her chocolate cone, the tooth came right out, leaving a tiny spot of blood on the cone, and she burst into tears. She cried for 20 minutes sitting on the park bench, even after we got the tooth tucked into a little plastic bag and gave her a fresh cone. On the walk home, she kept saying “Mia didn’t cry when she lost her tooth. Mia was brave.” She’d brought it up three more times that week, quiet little side comments about how all the other kids in her first grade class don’t cry when they lose teeth.
I told her okay, the Tooth Fairy would bring a letter, and she trotted back to bed. I finished the dishes, and sat down at the kitchen table with a pen. I almost scribbled a quick “Congrats on your tooth! Love, Tooth Fairy” and called it done. But then I thought about what she’d really been asking for: she didn’t want a piece of paper, she wanted someone to say that crying didn’t mean she wasn’t brave.
So I wrote that. I wrote: “I saw you crying when your tooth fell out at the ice cream shop, and that takes so much courage too. Crying when you’re surprised or scared is just being honest, and honest brave is my favorite kind of brave. All kids lose teeth different ways—some jump up and cheer, some cry, some hide under the covers until it’s out. I love getting to visit every single one of them, and your gap-toothed smile is my favorite this week.” I added a silly line about not eating too many lollipops before her next tooth falls out, signed it The Tooth Fairy, sealed it in an envelope with a sparkly unicorn sticker she’d left on the counter, and put it under the pillow next to the dollar.
Next morning she came barrelling into our bedroom at 6:30, waving the letter, read every line out loud twice to my husband before I even finished my first sip of coffee. She brought it to show her grandma on FaceTime that night, then taped it to the inside of her closet door, right next to her ribbon from school field day and a crayon drawing she made of our cat.
That’s when I started thinking about this little tradition, how much more it can be than just a fun gimmick or a way to get excited about a loose tooth. When kids are 5 to 8 years old, they spend almost all their time comparing themselves to their classmates. They pick up on every little difference: who can read faster, who can tie their shoes quicker, who doesn’t cry when they get hurt. A lot of the time, they won’t tell you they’re worried about this stuff. They won’t sit down and say “Mom, I feel like I’m not brave enough because I cried when my tooth fell out.” They just mumble about wanting a letter from the Tooth Fairy.
The thing that surprised me most was how much more that message landed coming from the Tooth Fairy instead of from me. I’d already told Lila three times that crying is okay, that everyone cries, that she was still brave. But when a magical, cool person who flies around collecting teeth says it? That sticks. For parents, that’s a really useful trick. It’s low-stakes, it doesn’t feel like a lecture. You don’t have to have a big serious talk about feelings. You just write a couple sentences in a letter from a fairy, and it gets the same point across without any of the awkwardness.
You don’t have to do much to make this work, either. It doesn’t need fancy cardstock or neat handwriting. I used a scrap of notebook paper I pulled out of Lila’s art bin. If your kid is worried because they’re the last one in class to lose a tooth, you can write a letter saying I save the best teeth for last, and it’s worth waiting for your tooth to be ready. If they lost a tooth right before school pictures and they’re upset about the gap, you can joke that the gap makes your smile extra easy for me to spot from the sky. If they were really brave and didn’t cry, name that too—specific praise sticks way more than generic good job.
Last week, Lila got upset when she couldn’t tie her shoes as fast as her older cousin at a family dinner. She stormed off to the living room, and I didn’t go after her right away. A minute later she came back, cheeks still pink, and asked if she could try again. I saw her glance at the inside of her closet on the way, where the letter still hangs. It’s not a fix for all the hard stuff that comes with being 7, of course. She still cries when she’s surprised or scared, she still compares herself to her friends all the time.
She already asked me last week if the Tooth Fairy will bring a letter for her next tooth, which is loose now and wiggling every time she eats apples. I told her I bet she will. It takes five minutes, it’s less work than wrapping a birthday present for her class party, and right now it’s working. I don’t know if she’ll remember this in 10 years, or if she’ll stop believing next Christmas and tease me for being silly. For now, that’s okay. It’s just a small, silly tradition that’s doing more good than I ever expected.
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