My mom is a dental hygienist. She currently works at a pediatric dentist office and her patients range from the age of 2 to young adults. With years of experience, she's seen some of the worst teeth you can possibly imagine to perfect teeth.

1. "Brush your teeth correctly or else I'm going to come up there and brush them for you!"

This threat used to scare the crap out of my siblings and me when we were little and we immediately brushed our teeth correctly. We knew if our mom brushed our teeth, she'd SCRUB our teeth to the point where our gums would bleed.

2. "See! I knew you weren't brushing your teeth correctly! You had so much plaque on your teeth. It's disgusting."

Like I said in number 1, my mom would brush our teeth if we weren't doing it correctly and we'd always get this response. We would always say "my gums hurt" and she would say "if you were brushing them correctly, they wouldn't be hurting!"

3. "When was the last time you flossed? You're supposed to floss every day!" or "You haven't been flossing your teeth! Go floss!"

My mom can tell from a mile away when I haven't flossed. When I say that I haven't flossed in a few days, I get the "you're supposed to floss every day" lecture and then she makes me floss.

4. "Go get the food out from your braces! It's making your breath smell!"

My siblings and I all had terrible teeth and we all needed braces to correct them. If anyone who's has braces knows, you can't eat anything without it getting stuck in your braces. My mom always made us go upstairs and brush and floss our teeth right after we ate.

5. "Ew. You like that flavor?"

At my most recent cleaning, my mom asked me what flavor toothpaste I wanted. When I told her I wanted bubblegum toothpaste, she turned to me and said "Are you sure?" After she was done cleaning my teeth and I made a face, my mom said "Don't make that face. You chose the flavor."

6. "You see how perfect her teeth are? That's because I probably scared the crap out of her when she was my patient!"

Every summer, my family and I go to the Jersey Shore. Usually, my mom takes my siblings and I out to eat on the first night because we don't feel like cooking and we liked to wait for my dad to come down so we can cook a family dinner. One year, we went to one of our favorite restaurants called Owen's Pub in Wildwood. Throughout the course of the dinner, my mom kept saying "I know our waitress from somewhere. She looks so familiar but I don't remember where I know her from." It turns out our waitress went to the first dentist my mom ever worked for when she was little and she remembered my mom as well. My mom said to us "I most likely scared her when she was little because she has perfect teeth."

7. "You're not allowed to fall back asleep for a few hours. So try and stay awake."

I was put under general anesthesia when I got my wisdom teeth taken out and when I got my tooth implant in. When you wake up from the procedure, you're groggy and all you want to do is sleep. My mom has assisted in wisdom teeth surgeries and implants in the past and knows all about the recovery process. You're supposed to take it easy after you had anesthesia and it takes hours for it to wear off (depending on how invasive the surgery is) so falling asleep apparently screws with the wearing off process.

8. "Don't chew on *insert hard candy here*! You'll chip a tooth!"

Growing up if my mom heard me crunch on a hard candy like a tootsie pop, she'd tell me how bad it was for my teeth and why I shouldn't do it.

9. "Why do you even have that? You know you're not supposed to eat those. All the sugar in that will root your teeth."


Growing up, I wasn't allowed to eat jolly ranchers and other hard candy. When we would go trick or treating, my mom would allow us to keep about 60% of our candy and then give the rest away. When my friends complained about having to get a cavity filled, I would respond "I never had one".

10. "Put your retainers in!"

If you wear a retainer, you'll never hear the end of "do you still wear your retainers?" from your parents and dentist. You've heard it a million times about how it's so important to wear your retainer. Every once in a while, my mom asks the three of us if we wear our retainers. I'm the best at wearing my retainer while my brother and sister are the ones who usually don't and they always get lectured that their teeth will shift if they don't wear them.

Even though I hate getting lectured about my oral hygiene, I'm lucky that my mom is a dental hygienist because I always get complimented on how beautiful my teeth and smile are. In every dance picture and school yearbook, my smile was always one of the most noticeable.