Teen terrors trigger toothlessness

Several months ago, I was at the dentist, complaining about pain in my jaw, and my dentist asked, "Do you grind your teeth?"

"Of course I do," I said. "I have teen-agers at home."

Oh, he and his assistant had a good laugh about that, until they realized I was serious.

Parenting teens is an exercise in jaw-grinding, tongue-biting, hair-pulling, brain-busting frustration. Even if you have the most responsible, scholarly, polite kids in the world, they'll still drive you crazy. It's nature's way of preparing the parents for the children's departure from the nest; by the time they're out of high school, we can't wait for them to leave home.

The dynamics of the parent-child relationship center on the struggle for autonomy. The child wants the freedom to do whatever he wants whenever he wants with whomever he wants. The parent, on the other hand, wants the child to stay in his room, quietly doing his homework, until he's 40.

The most difficult task for parents is "letting go." If teens are to learn about life, they must be free to make their own mistakes, but we parents know it's a dangerous world out there, full of hazards and stupidity, and it's hard for us to let the kids out of our sight. We've invested all these years in keeping our children safe and healthy. Now that they've reached adolescence, we balk at letting them spend the evening "just riding around" in a bald-tired van with someone named Crazy Jake. Call us paranoid.

We parents try to build safeguards into our teens' behavior. We say "no" a lot. We set curfews. We require adult supervision. We ask for references. We use cell phones like leashes, maintaining contact. We wait up. We constantly worry.

Why? Because we remember what we were up to when we were that age. The trouble we got into (or narrowly avoided), the near-misses and the almost-wrecks and the passing scrapes with The Law. We'd like to believe that our children are smarter than we were at that age. We'd like to believe that we've taught them so well that they'll avoid the pitfalls of youth. But hahaha on that.

Each generation must get into the same trouble all over again. Adolescence is about experimenting and taking risks and acting a fool. Some behaviors (and I'm thinking here of sex or wild driving or mouthing off to authority figures) are just too tantalizing to avoid, no matter how well-trained the child may be. We parents know this, and that's why we stress out over our kids.

Once children reach high school (and certainly once they start driving), they're determined to do things on their own. Nine kinds of parental rules and restraints won't keep them from going out into the world and screwing up. We can wheedle and lecture and preach, and they'll ignore all that and do what they want. We can absolutely forbid certain behaviors, and they'll sneak around and do them anyway. We can lock the kids in their rooms, and they'll climb out the windows.

Just like we did when we were their age.

Teens see it as their job to drive their parents nuts by staying out half the night doing who-knows-what and coming home disheveled and suspiciously bleary. And it's the parents' job to fret and stew and grind our teeth.

This tension between parents and teens has always existed. It's the way of the world. It's the natural order.

And it's why your parents wear dentures.

Open wide. No, I meant your wallet

I've been thinking a lot recently about the similarities between plumbing and dentistry:

--They're both high-paying jobs with regular hours.

--Outside those regular hours -- in times of emergency -- both professions can charge extra.

--Insurance (homeowners or medical) rarely covers the really expensive jobs.

--Both professions use specialized tools for diagnosis and repair.

--Dentists and plumbers mostly work in dark, wet holes.

--Customers are almost never happy to see them. Except in times of emergency.

These comparisons come to mind because I've had both professions dabbling in my wallet lately. You know your life has gone awry when it's suddenly populated by plumbers and dentists.

(I said this to my wife, who responded, "Better a dentist than an oncologist." Her subtle way of saying: "Stop whining, you big baby." She's right, of course. Plumbing and dental problems are nothing compared to life-threatening illness or other disasters. But given a choice, you'd avoid both plumbers and dentists, wouldn't you?)

And yet, in the aforementioned times of emergency, we owners of plumbing and/or teeth feel like getting down on our knees and thanking the gods of dark, wet holes that someone, somewhere, has the devotion to take up these mystical, lucrative crafts. If you've got a toothache or a major indoor flood, you're willing to pay any price to get an expert on the job.

I've been lucky when it comes to dentists. My regular dentist and the various specialists I've seen have been dedicated professionals who make the procedures as painless as possible. (And, if they're reading this, I'd like that trend to continue. Thank you.)

Most plumbers I've retained have been knowledgable and competent, too. They've maintained a professional image by keeping their shirt tails tucked in, and by explaining in great detail the source of my plumbing woes.

These explanations bring up another similarity between the two professions: There's always the implication that the problem is somehow the owners' fault. With teeth, it's failure to floss or to perform other proper maintenance. With plumbing, it's neglect or ignorance or having children who flush entire rolls of toilet paper at one, er, sitting.

What these professionals fail to remember is that we customers know nothing, and our problems usually are invisible until it's an emergency. Much of our plumbing is underground or otherwise hidden and we never give it a thought until the drains start backing up. The same, more or less, goes for our teeth. Until there's a problem, we choose to assume everything's fine.

Which brings us to the biggest difference between plumbing and dentistry. Most of us -- unless motivated by extreme poverty -- would never attempt to fix our own teeth. But many homeowners attempt to tackle plumbing problems, often making things worse. After all, we've heard all those explanations from plumbers in the past. We own tools. How hard could it be to do a repair ourselves?

An example: I had a bathroom sink with a drain that had been partially clogged for, oh, years. The sink emptied slowly, and refused to respond to all store-bought remedies. I kept thinking, if only I had a snake small enough, I could reach down that drain and break up that clog and life would be good. So I straightened out a wire clothes hanger and slid it down to the U-shaped trap and, sure enough, cleared the drain. I felt like a hero.

A week or two later, another sink began exhibiting the same symptoms. Aha, I thought, I can fix this. I got my straightened coat-hanger, pushed it down to the trap and deftly punched a hole in the rotted pipe below. The pipe responded by bleeding on the carpet.

Now I was faced with an emergency. I studied the situation for a good hour before doing what I should've done in the first place -- I called my dentist.

Kidding! I called a plumber, who came to the house and replaced the leaking pipe in a matter of minutes. He had the tools, he had the know-how and he had the proper parts.

Me? I had a checkbook. And a grateful smile.

This . . . Or this?

You know how your eye doctor has you look through different lenses on that optical machine, trying to narrow down the nature of your problem?

"Which is better? A . . . Or B?"
"B"
"One . . . Or two?"
"Two."
"This . . . Or that?"
"Can you do that one again?"


What if your dentist operated this way?

"Here, chew this. Now chew this. Which is better? Hard . . . or soft?"