I came home after four days away and froze when my 7-year-old daughter, Emma, smiled at me.<\/p>\n
Several of her baby teeth were gone.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrandma helped me,\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n
My mother-in-law, Diane, calmly admitted she had pulled them because they \u201clooked ridiculous\u201d and claimed Emma would be prettier without them.<\/p>\n
Then Emma quietly said, \u201cGrandma told me nobody would want pictures with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
I threw Diane out and immediately took Emma to the dentist.<\/p>\n
Two teeth had been ready to fall out.<\/p>\n
The others had not.<\/p>\n
But things got worse.<\/p>\n
Emma revealed Diane had kept the teeth in a blue box and had repeatedly convinced her that her smile was ugly.<\/p>\n
She also admitted she had told her grandmother to stop\u2014but Diane kept finding \u201cone more\u201d tooth that needed fixing.<\/p>\n
Then my husband confessed he knew his mother had been messing with Emma\u2019s teeth.<\/p>\n
He thought she was only checking a loose one.<\/p>\n
Diane insisted she was helping.<\/p>\n
But when Emma stood behind me covering her mouth, my husband finally realized the damage.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe never used to hide her smile,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Then he turned to his mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou won\u2019t be alone with her again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weeks later, Emma\u2019s gums healed.<\/p>\n
Three months afterward, another tooth fell out naturally.<\/p>\n
Emma ran into the kitchen, grinning proudly.<\/p>\n
\u201cTake a picture!\u201d<\/p>\n
So I did.<\/p>\n
She smiled with messy hair, crooked teeth, and no shame at all.<\/p>\n
Because the real damage wasn\u2019t the missing teeth.<\/p>\n
It was teaching a little girl that being pretty mattered more than her right to say no.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I came home after four days away and froze when my 7-year-old daughter, Emma, smiled at me. Several of her baby teeth were gone. \u201cGrandma helped me,\u201d she whispered. My mother-in-law, Diane, calmly admitted she had pulled them because they \u201clooked ridiculous\u201d and claimed Emma would be prettier without them. Then Emma quietly said, \u201cGrandma …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9204,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9202\/revisions\/9204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}