What’s the going rate for a milk tooth these days?
February 28 is Tooth Fairy Day, which gives me an excuse to dig out the letters my children exchanged with their fairies up to a few years ago.
We used to type up messages in a tiny flowery italic font, sometimes using the fairies (whom we gave flower names) to pass on a message of reassurance about something that was bothering one of them, or subtly encouraging them to do more of some parent-approved activity or other. We loved their responses — especially from middle daughter, who maintained a willing suspension of belief in tooth fairies simply because she liked the idea of them. She was always asking questions to deepen her understanding of fairy world:
Dear Crocosmia, When is you birthday? Mine is October 17th. How have you been doing recently. Do fairies get colds? I’ve got one. Write to me soon love P
It was tiring hunting for coins and typing out these notes at night, making sure the fairies’ responses were consistent with previous answers, and remembering to stick them under pillows. But as my children have morphed into giant, cynical, snarling teens, it’s a reminder of an innocent place we will never know again.
The average gift is £1 per tooth these days, per a recent survey, though some parents pay as much as £20 for the first milk tooth as it’s ‘an important milestone’. Though UK tooth fairies paid out £489.5m in the years 2011-20, rates seem to be going down: parents now aged 55-64 earned £1.27 per tooth in 1962 (£27.70 today), but parents now aged 35-44 got £3.64 per tooth in 1982 (about £13.13 today).
And that’s not all kids have to contend with. In a social media chat initiated a couple of years back by Emmerdale actor Karen Blick, parents confessed to some very sharp practices: recycling the same pound coin time and again, taking the money from the child’s piggy bank, or paying in Monopoly money. Clearly pre-schoolers need to unionise.
