Techno-Luddite Homemaking

[feldman]

Despite living in a greater metro area lousy with drugstores, I've
just ordered toothpaste online. Why? Because we've been gifted with
an 18 month old who clamors to brush her teeth and I refuse to corrupt
that impulse with sparkly candy crapola. She doesn't need to be
tricked--she's quite happy to brush along with us, even if her
technique needs a great deal of work. She certainly doesn't need to
associate bubblegum flavor with cleanliness. She needs something
basic sans fluoride and sans fucking sparkles--sparkles are for the
bath, not eating. Something, in short, that doesn't piss me
off.

Bad enough that it took me a month to find a wee toothbrush
without marketing (and every time she stops to ponder the happy
generic duckies on the handle I feel vindicated on that score)--we're
fast running out of the tiny tube of discontinued Burt's Bees
children's toothpaste she uses.

I've tried to find Tom's of Maine stuff locally, but the selection is
either fluoridated or fennel-flavored. She's an adventurous eater,
but I can't stand the smell of licorice or fennel. So I found the
good stuff online: non-fluoride "silly strawberry" for her and an
intriguing tube of fluoridated "cinnamon clove" for me.

I made peace with the idea of fruit and spice flavors, after all, mint
is an herb. Bubblegum is still way beyond the pale, however. Is this
generational, or cultural? Am I the only one who finds candy-flavored
dentifrice for children disturbingly counterproductive? It strikes me
as akin to Funyun-scented soap for teens. If I'm odd I'll cop to it*,
I just want to take the cultural temp here.

*After all, Mr. F and I spent fifteen minutes in Yankee Candle
this weekend picking out a handful of votives for the bathroom that,
in theory, would still smell okay with the addition of poop (by
experience we know that all 'baked goods' scents are straight
out).

Comments

[timesink.livejournal.com]

You could just use baking soda.

I'm curious -- why un-fluoridated toothpaste?

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

Bubblegum toothpaste is super-common around here; when I was little MANY years ago, they already had it. My parents sometimes boughts kids' tp, but after a while, we just used theirs. We also got flouride tablets, my sis and I, and had perfectly cavities-free teeth until our mid-twenties. But I think you have flouride in the water, so yeah, you wouldn't want to overdose. (All these additivs are freaky. Functional food? Functions as poison if one overdoes it.)

[monanotlisa.livejournal.com]

I was wondering the same thing--my dentist says you might as well brush with water only.

But you know. Dentists. Each tells you a new story.

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

We have fluoridated water, and too much fluoride can cause problems as well. Since she's very into the taste and ritual of toothpaste, she tends to eat it, which is no biggie if it's a cleaning paste without fluoride.

If we wanted her to use baking soda we'd have to use it as well, as mimicry is the main engine driving her desire to brush. We're simply not that green yet (or ever), and all baking soda ends up in the laundry room for washing diapers anyway.

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

Mmm, Tom's. I will go a long way to buy my wintermint toothpaste... though I admit I'm scared of the spicy ones. My friend likes the fennel one, though.

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

I just...can't fathom the bubblegum. I can't explain the repugnance, so yes, it's probably a personal quirk.

Our water is fluoridated, so until she learns to spit the toothpaste out we have to treat it as food and hold it to that standard.

I had terrible teeth as a child due to chronic strep throat causing lots of puking that weakened the enamel. I'm always surprised at how robust my adult teeth have turned out, considering most of what I left for the tooth fairy were amalgam-encrusted shards.

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

Part of the appeal of cinnamon-clove was that it seemed warming, and it's freezing today.

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

And it tastes awful (I was going to say like crap but we're on a level of literalism here that grodifies that statement) - baking soda, I mean.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

I love, and frequently use, the cinnamon-clove Tom's toothpaste. But I'm also a favor of the baking-soda ones, for later on.

And no, I don't think it's strange to be weirded out by the bubblegum flavors. They were around when we were kids, but smell and taste as weird as the bubble-gum flavored Mr. Freezee's so I never had an interest, even as a kid (my constant toothpaste desire is gel, as opposed to pastes, but that's easy).

Also, I loathe citrus flavored toothpastes and mouthwashes (but also dislike orange liquers so, you know, I'm not among the one's you want weighing in on this). LUSH has a crazy black toothpaste that I liked a lot, but still may not be fabulous for the munchkin.

[timesink.livejournal.com]

We have fluoridated water, and too much fluoride can cause problems as well

Ah. That makes sense.

My kids never liked the bubblegum toothpaste. We tried it, just for the heck of it, and it was just gross. I just made them use what we used (which was plain old Crest/Colgate whatever, the basic version) because I didn't want to buy 42 tubes of toothpaste.

[rubberneck.livejournal.com]

It's not like we're in Yankee Candle after all, snickering as the earnest nametag girl insists on tissue-wrapping our two-buck votive holder.

Me: We're just looking for candles for the shitter.
Mr. F: We need something that smells good with baths *and/or* poop.

[riarambles.livejournal.com]

Our dentists say not to give flouridated toothpaste to kids who don't know how to spit yet; they might swallow too much of it.

[riarambles.livejournal.com]

We got lucky in that our Target has toothpaste for babies/toddlers with no sparkles and no flouride, and toothbrushes with non-branded elephants and trains.

[jebbypal]

As a kid (and partially still now), I loathed the taste/smell of anything minty - peppermint, spearmint, mint mint, wintergreen, it didn't matter. Every dentist visit was a trip to the flavor torture chamber as far as I was concerned and brushing my teeth freqently resulted in temper tantrums until aquafresh came out (don't know what you'd say it tastes like, but it wasn't minty). That said, I didn't like any of the bubblegum flavors either to tell the truth. I think cinnamon Aim was the first one I found acceptable in the taste department.

[danceswithwords.livejournal.com]

I remember at one point when the dentist switched from spearmint to bubblegum for the toothpaste he used on my cleanings; it was momentous, since at that point I had developed a spearmint aversion that survives to this day. I don't think there was as much differentiation between what adults and children used in the 70s, for toothpaste and a lot of other things; it seems like an increasingly out-of-control marketing tactic. I always had the minty stuff as a kid, and I'm not sure "everything should taste like sugary candy!" is a message I'd want to implant in a child at a young age either.

[forbino.livejournal.com]

Oh come on...Techno Luddites?

Its not like we have:
A wireless network, multiple computers, Ipaq, ipod system for your car, and years of tech work combined with....

a back yard garden, outside clothes line, cloth diapers, a manual lawn-mower, and more "staples" in our pantry than prep-packaged food.....