Dentist

Today was Lindsay's first visit to the dentist. I was concerned about her two upper molars looking odd, but fortunately everything was absolutely fine. She has two-tone molars. How original.

But it got me thinking about how parenting has changed since I was a kid. Parents are told to bring their children in to the dentist between age 2 and 3. That seems extremely early to me. I can't imagine that my parents brought me into the dentist before the age of 6, when my baby teeth started falling out.

There seems to be more information for parents these days, but I've come to the realization that there are too many opinions. Instead of giving parents information that is useful, which would calm many fears, there is so much information (mostly alarmist) flying around from thousands of "experts" it has the opposite effect. It can make you downright neurotic about making a decision.

The news just loves to scare the crap out of the general public. Consumer Reports just came out with a story showing babies flying out of car seats. They were trying to say that car seats are normally tested with the vehicle going 30 mph. But now look what happens when you get into an accident going 35mph. Cue the flying baby footage. It had parents flipping out. Turns out that in their great salivating desire to show baby carnage, they jumped the gun and didn't perform the test correctly. I think the cars were really going over 70mph. Bastards!