Scheduling dentist appointments, eye doctor appointments aren’t that awful, but when you have multiple children it’s best to split up these visits. Every year around the beginning of school I have to get everyone into these two offices. Going to the eye doctor is such a chore for me, I know I will always be there for a lengthy amount of time. I usually go by myself if time allows, take the twins a different day, and finally the older two kids separately. However the dentist is usually a speedy process, so this year I decided it would be good to just bust out all four kids in one visit. Wrong. I had to reschedule that and split them up.

Just the other day I took the twins for their 6-month cleaning. When we walked into the office I spotted the fear on the faces of the women that work at the front desk. It’s comical to me at this point– there’s always someone snarking, “Oh we have twins?!” I assume that they’ve had visits in the past with other multiples that have been mildly horrific. To the dental assistants surprise my children were actually arguing over who got to go first. They were so excited and eager to have their teeth looked at, so when the assistant said, “Ladies go first,” Connor slumped his shoulders and agreed with a resigned, “I guess you’re right.” Their visits went great and everything was perfect. Connor is only missing his two front teeth and Kelsie has quite the jack-o-lantern smile at the moment. I am pretty sure if you combine the two sets they might have a full smile?!

I believe as parents we have to lead by example, our children look up to us and watch everything we do.  They are little recording devices and learn behavior from us. Fortunately for the dentist and eye doctor’s sake I have always made sure to express to my kids how much I enjoy these visits (I secretly dread the eye doctor, shhh!) and how wonderful it is to have good healthy clean teeth and to be able to see and enjoy the world around you. I have never once had any of my children complain about going, in fact they are always asking when their next appointments are! If we remain calm and don’t fuss over things, typically kids follow suit. Makes life a whole lot easier.