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You may think it looks harmless, but my seven year old would quickly correct that very mistaken impression.

If you had been hanging around our house this past week you might still think that the Middle Ages were in full swing, and that torturing small children was an acceptable practice. Every evening around bedtime the wailing would begin...echoing through the chambers of the house shrill screams of "not the crank" and "don't tighten it! " along with shouts of "NO, MOM, NO."

A friend once told me that she always used to tell her daughters "Beauty is Pain" as she combed out their snarls and got them ready for the day. That hasn't been quite the lesson I wanted Sadie to learn this week, and besides who wants the moral of the story when their teeth, their head and their tongue hurts?

Let's just say it's been a long couple of days. But I think we might be through the woods. Tonight as we finished the crank and the hysterics I looked down at Sadie and asked as I dried her tears "Does it even hurt anymore?" She stopped crying and looked up at me thinking. "You're just crying because you remember that it did hurt a few days ago, huh..." and then she started giggling.

I decided that's the moral of the story for this week: growing can be painful, whether it's reshaping your mouth, or your life. And that seems a lot better lesson to teach my girls...instead of "beauty is pain" how about "inner beauty often comes from painful lessons." But I still think I might wait a few days to pass on my little bit of mom wisdom...at least until all the aching subsides.