Raising Kids or Root Canals
Most of us have had at least dental cleanings about every six months, and unless you had traumatic childhood dental experiences, those seem to be manageable. As we get older, we have more possibilities of having extra dental work - cavities, crowns and caps, braces, or root canals. Although I’ve experienced all those, they’re not my favorite activities that I would sign up for on a regular basis. Part of that is related to childhood trauma and some of it is the desire to avoid pain.
About a month ago I started having pain in my upper jaw that I thought was a possible tooth that was acting up so I went to my dentist and he said, “Yeah there’s some kind of infection and maybe even decay, but I’m gonna give you an antibiotic that you can take and we’ll see if after two weeks if it clears up your jaw pain.”
Two weeks later (today), I went back to see Dr. Dale and he greeted me at the front lobby door. I followed him back to his dental chair. I got in the dental chair and after we had pleasant greetings, he began to lay the dental chair to the prone position and I said, “Hey Doc, what’s going on?”
He responded, “Well let’s just go ahead and get that root canal done.”
I said, “I didn’t think I was gonna get a root canal done today.”
And he said, “Well I think it’s just best for us to go ahead and deal with it so it doesn’t cause any more problems down the road.”
For the next hour and 15 minutes I laid there and listened to him as he and his assistant talked about my dental work and the need to take care of some issues. At the end of my visit, he looked at me and said, “Well you’ll be glad you got this done.”
I added that it didn’t feel good initially, but that I convinced myself that it wasn’t as bad as the pain I had been feeling. I was glad I had done the procedure, and I addressed it so I didn’t have to deal with it more down the road. When I got in the car and as the numbness subsided throughout the morning, I was relieved that I had gotten the root canal done. I decided I would try to decide what lessons of life I learned through this experience. So here they are:
• Every now and then we must address the fact that life will include some pain and surprises. As much as I would like to think that I could control my children when they were growing up and that I can control all dental work, I learned that sometimes pain happens. We don’t always get to decide what will happen to us - especially when others make choices and decide what they will do.
• Addressing the pain is much more important when it first begins than to wait until it gets worse. Fortunately, my dentist allows me to take the gas and some other comforts that make things bearable. Talk to other parents or a therapist for some relief. Don’t wait for your children’s behavior to get better on its own. Frequently (more often than not) time doesn’t heal hurt or poor choices.
• Addressing the pain on the front end, makes a difficult journey not so painful because when the “decay” is realized and the problems are faced, the struggle is bearable, and the solutions help ease the pain. At the time of our children misbehaving, whether they are preschoolers,
teenagers or even young adults, it seems that it’s the “worst thing in the world.” But that’s not necessarily true. Addressing the pain and the difficulty and correcting the problem, makes us capable of surviving future conflicts of behaviors and prepares us to deal with the next crisis with the knowledge that we’ve survived issues in the past and we can do it again as well.
• Once we survive the terrible threes, we begin to realize that we begin to lose the sense of control we’ve ever had over our kids. As they progress to elementary school, adolescence, middle and high school and their choices of college, work or enlisting in the military after that, we realize that we have less control now than we’ve ever had. We must learn how to address the losses, pain, and lack of control and know that our job as parents never ends.
• I’m not suggesting that you “take the medication” to deal with the pain of raising children, I am saying find someone who understands the pain you’ve gone through and has some ideas about how to improve the situation and bring about change and correction in your life that makes the future understandable and unbearable.
