And the tears came.

Last night at about 9:15pm I hear a sniffle and a whimper and a beckoning, "Mom, mom...." barely audible come from Luke and float down the stairs. He has been perfecting his stall tactics lately so I thought this was part of the scheme. Once I got into his room, he collapsed into my arms. Sobbing, tears rolling down his cheeks. "Mommy, the trampoline was in my mouth and it would not let my mouth close." "The swisher was loud and I was scared." "I wanted to get out of the chair and the dentist said I had to sit as still as a statue." "It took so long." "They put medicine on it." "I don't want to go to the dentist."

Wow, a flood of emotions. Turns out this was all tied to his root canal and filling from two weeks ago that he proclaimed was "no biggie". Luke is a thinker and from what I can tell he held in all of these emotions and fear, thinking about them since the visit. The morning before he had come into my bedroom at 5am and asked me when he had to go to the dentist and I thought nothing of it. Oh, poor thing had been carrying this weight all alone.

What a true lesson for me to remember, to really listen to what my child tells me. Maybe I should have been able to sense his fear that morning or brought up the dental visit again a few days after the procedure to make sure he still felt comfortable with what had happened. For Luke, I now know that just because he carries a smile on his face does not mean he is smiling in his heart.

So today we ventured over to the dental office again and he had a "fun" visit. Brushed his teeth, got a prize. They said they would send us a card in 6 months so that we could come back again for a cleaning and Luke replied with, "Sounds good. See you next week." I am hoping we have cleared the air with this one.