My 5yo ds has pulled two of his own teeth out...

[utterlyconfused]

I don't know why he's doing it. I think it makes him feel grown up to lose teeth. They were both wobbly, but I don't think ready. He is dc3, so I kind of know how it goes now. Any dentists out there? I know that the adult tooth "dissolves" the roots of the baby tooth, so presumably this will still happen if there are still some bits of root there. Can he actually do any harm by doing this?

Oh...
bump

My ds did this the other day. He is 5 and autistic so he doen't like the feeling of woobly teeth in his mouth.
I spoke to my dentist the day after he did it and he said that if he was able to pull them out on his own (without the aid of pliers!) then there should be no harm done. The blood you probably saw was the skin around the gumline being split.
HTH

Oh thanks!
The first one happened, I believe, with the aid of his sister, and there was blood everywhere!

Funny, he has recently been diagnosed with DCD so there are various sensory issues going on and it hadn't occurred to me that the sensation might bother him. I suspect it doesn't, as he hasn't said anything to that effect. I think he just feels grown up. So it's ok as long as dh's toolkit isn't used...

I remember lying in bed one night aged about 6/7yrs old with my best friend in the spare bed next to me. I was intensely jealous as we'd both discovered a wobbly tooth on the same day some weeks before - but hers had fallen out THAT NIGHT....I lay in bed wiggling it for what felt like hours until it fell out and then went and proudly showed my mum........well I wasn't going to let my best friend have the tooth fairy visit at my house and miss out .

Well, I don't suppose it's any difference to my dd having hers pulled out by the dentist. It was wobbly, she was almost 6, but she had a little ulcer on her gum because the tooth had been broken beyond the gumline as a toddler. The dentist said that the sooner the tooth came out the better and to encourage her to wobble it. I asked him to pull it out and he said are you sure, and I asked it there were a reason not to. He said only the trauma for her.
Sorry. Answering my own query, really, aren't I?