My kids have too many teeth

It's just too much. It's altogether too much.

A smiling child.
(Image credit: ckpstock.com/Stockimo/Alamy Stock Photo)

"That's just so many teeth."

This is what I said to the confused mother of five seated across from me at lunch. It was a weird followup to a pretty standard suburban question: "How many kids do you have?" Depending on your point of view, there are plenty of more appropriate reactions, including "how wonderful" and "so you have to make dinner for seven people every single night?" Those thoughts also ran in the back of my mind, along with questions about what kind of a car she drives and if she knows about college tuition. But mostly, I wondered about the teeth. Because I have three kids — and that already is far too many teeth.

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Annabel Monaghan is a lifestyle columnist at The Week and the author of Does This Volvo Make My Butt Look Big? (2016), a collection of essays for moms and other tired people. She is also the author of two novels for young adults, A Girl Named Digit (2012) and Double Digit (2014), and the co-author of Click! The Girls Guide to Knowing What You Want and Making it Happen (2007). She lives in Rye, New York, with her husband and three sons. Visit her at www.annabelmonaghan.com.