How Not to Lose Your First Tooth

Elias kneels on the floor, casually side-eyeing the offending yellow balloon to his left that will later become his downfall

There are certain parenting milestones you picture in your head long before they happen. First steps. First words. First tooth.

And then there are the milestones you absolutely do not picture. Like your child launching himself face-first into a wooden floor via an exploding birthday balloon and losing a tooth in the least magical way imaginable.

Yet here we are.

Because of Elias’ developmental delay, even getting his first teeth felt delayed compared to other children. He didn’t get his first tooth until he was around 14 months old. We’d also been told not to expect him to start losing teeth until closer to seven years old.

So naturally, at the age where other children are still proudly showing off fully intact toddler smiles, Elias decided to speedrun the experience.

It started over the bank holiday weekend during celebrations for his younger brother’s birthday. The house was full of balloons, sugar, noise, and chaos.

Elias with his face pressed into the balloon

Elias loves balloons. Obsessed with them. Holding them, bouncing them, lying on them. All standard Elias behaviour. So when he started playing on one, none of us thought twice about it.

Until it exploded.

If you’ve ever seen a child completely lose all sense of gravity and bodily control in one split second, you’ll understand the kind of panic that follows. One moment he was happily playing, the next he had gone down face-first onto our wooden floor with an almighty thud. There were immediate cuddles, immediate tears, immediate guilt. Standard parenting procedure.

At first, I thought we’d escaped with just a nasty bump. It wasn’t until a few moments later that I looked down and realised my entire top was covered in blood. And then I saw one of his front teeth had been pushed back up into the gum.

That was the exact moment my brain exited the chat.

While my partner attempted to calmly talk me down from what can only be described as a full internal medical catastrophe spiral, I sat on the phone to 111 trying to explain what had happened through sheer panic.

Then came the part every parent of a child with additional needs knows all too well: repeating your child’s entire medical history over and over again to different professionals.

Two emergency dentist trips followed. Every appointment started the same way: “Yes, he’s developmentally delayed.” “Yes, he’s deaf.” “Yes, he has additional needs.” “Yes, communication can be difficult.” “No, he won’t tolerate that.”

By the time we finally got through the bank holiday weekend and into our wonderful local community dental team for children with additional needs, I felt like I’d completed some kind of emotionally exhausting NHS side quest.

And then, two days later, we woke up and the tooth was simply… gone.

Not loose. Not hanging on dramatically. Gone.

Vanished into thin air.

Or more realistically, into Elias.

Now, many people kindly suggested I could “check” for it. I want to make it very clear that there is not a maternal instinct on this earth strong enough to make me root through toddler poo searching for a tiny blood-covered tooth like some sort of deranged archaeologist.

So unless that tooth plans on reappearing with its own witness statement, we are officially considering it lost forever.

There was no tiny tooth fairy letter. No magical coin under the pillow. Honestly, I’m not even sure Elias would understand why a mystical nighttime burglar was exchanging body parts for money anyway.

Elias smiles at the camera, a noticeable gap where his two front teeth would be.

Instead, there were just a lot of cuddles, a traumatised mother, and a very gummy little smile where his front tooth used to be.

And perhaps that’s the thing about parenting children with complex needs. Even the milestones don’t happen the way you expect them to. The stories are messier. The emotions are bigger. The plans are irrelevant.

Sometimes your child loses their first tooth not in a sweet primary school photo moment, but because a birthday balloon betrayed your entire family (every balloon was rounded up and burst immediately after the incident in retribution).

And sometimes you discover that in a crisis, one parent becomes the calm, reassuring voice of reason… while the other one is mentally drafting NHS complaint forms, Googling “can toddlers survive without teeth”, and trying not to pass out into a puddle of their own anxiety.

For the record, I was the second parent.

Absolutely useless.