Kids grow so fast. And with every milestone they reach it seems mom and dad get a little more desperate to keep the image of their fresh-from-the-oven bun, alive.
Seriously, parents keep some pretty strange things lying around the house as reminders that junior once fit in the crook of their arms; including flaps of dried and dead umbilical cord, locks of hair, teeth and other things that seem more serial killer-y than parent-y.
Nevertheless, we look past this parental desire to collect kid’s body parts and chalk these collections up as simple methods to cope with kids growing up. But the recent trend of turning your kid’s baby teeth into a keepsake has upped the weird factor of this innocent practice and has really made it kind of creepy.
That’s right, all over the internet, shops and various products have been popping up that cater to the folks that not only want to keep their kid’s teeth, but want to put them on display, too … because nothing says “Happy Holidays” quite like a set of junior’s chompers displayed front-and-center on the mantle.
Among the options are simple display cases, think clear petri dish with individual slots for each tooth, wooden teeth boxes, teeth scrapbooks and even “tooth monster” dolls (see the photo above), which quite literally look they just stepped out of Jeffery Dahmer’s nightmares.
You can even buy jewelry with your little one’s pearly whites embedded inside them … for, you know, those special nights out when actual pearls or diamonds just won’t cut it.
They’ll set you back $50-$300 and will likely confuse the archeologists that digs you up in 500 years, when he or she finds that you were buried with parts of a child (because let’s be real, no one is going to want your teeth jewelry- not even your kids).
Really though, whatever happened to the days of a simple scrapbook filled with pictures of junior stuffing his face with cake or little Sally being a grump when forced to take pictures with her really annoying cousin?
For me, spending time with my mom and dad as they dug out the scrapbooks and told me why I looked like an angry little cupcake in my baby pictures is something I’ll cherish and something that I could share with future generations.
My baby teeth are not.
Look, I know that the keepsakes are really for the parents more than for the kids, and it’s really great that you want to keep your memories of your child as a child so close to your heart, but apart from those parents that have gone through the horrifying heartbreak of losing their child, it’s not necessary to keep bits and pieces of your kid to remember your kid because you have your kid.
And as a parent, the time that you spend with your kid, and the memories that you make with them, are far more valuable than the locks of hair or baby teeth that you keep locked away in your attic for years will ever be, especially one day when you’re gone and they have to cope to life without you.
Have you ever collected pieces of your kid as mementos to their youth or do you prefer making memories together? Let us know in the comments.
