Cashing In On A Visit From The Tooth Fairy

Today is Tooth Fairy Day. It’s pretty traumatic for kids to lose a tooth, but the promise of a visit from the Tooth Fairy seems to make everything much better, especially when the tooth is replaced with a small gift, usually money.

The only thing’s that’s changed since many of us were kids is the amount of money the Tooth Fairy leaves.

Sometimes, a kid is told to put the tooth in a glass of water next to the bed and during the night the tooth is replaced with a coin. It makes it easier for the Tooth Fairy to find the tooth rather than searching under the pillow and maybe waking up the kid.

At one time a European tradition was to bury baby teeth that fell out because if a witch got a hold of one of those teeth, a curse could be placed on the child. In many European countries, instead of a fairy – it’s a mouse that comes along and replaces the tooth with a coin.

In some Asian countries, such as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, when a child loses a tooth the usual custom is to throw the tooth on the roof if it was an upper tooth or under the house if it was a lower tooth while shouting a request for the tooth to be replaced with the tooth of a mouse. The thinking is that the teeth of mice continue to grow for their whole lives.