My just-turned 6-year-old granddaughter has entered the tooth-losing stage of her life.

One day recently, a front tooth was loose — her first. All it needed was a bit of wiggling and it’d be out in a day or two. That prompted my emergency conversation with my son: Had he consulted with the tooth fairy? What’s the going rate?

His reply: Anywhere between all the gold in Fort Knox and a few shiny coins.

All joking aside, when it was all said and done, the tooth fairy deposited three crisp $1 bills under the 6-year-old’s pillow. Which prompted her the next morning to scream “Mom, the tooth fairy!” while grinning ear to ear with a gap in the middle.

Parents sometimes ask me for the going rate for a tooth nowadays. For sure, kids can reasonably expect to get more than you did when you were a child, perhaps much more depending on the rate of inflation in your household.

I don’t remember getting anything more than a quarter or 50 cents when I was a kid, although as a parent, I think my three kids got $1 per tooth and maybe more for the first one.

Sometimes the tooth fairy would also leave behind some stickers, a Hot Wheels car or a small box of Lego’s. We’d actually put the lost tooth in a special place — a tiny pillow with a pocket on it.

Note to parents: We finally parted ways with the baby teeth last year.

Keep in mind that the tooth fairy is an accommodating sort who’s happy to tailor any payments to your liking — and budget.

But if you want more scientific benchmarks than asking friends in the neighborhood, there is data.

Delta Dental said it has “closely” tracked the tooth fairy’s giving habits for 27 years. Its 2025 survey of 1,000 parents of children ages 6 to 12 was released in January.

The insurer’s new poll found that the average value of a single lost tooth this year is $5.01, a 14% decline from $5.84 in 2024. Delta said this marked the largest decline in tooth fairy value since the poll’s inception, and the second consecutive yearly drop.

What’s behind the frugality? An economic sign of the times? After all, Delta Dental said its survey typically tracks with the direction of the Standard & Poor’s 500 index. However, the value of a lost tooth has gone in different directions than the S&P since 2023.

Still, thanks to inflation, the average cash gift left by the tooth fairy has increased 285%, from $1.30 per tooth to $5.01, since 1998.

The Delta Dental survey also noted that a third of the parental responders said the tooth fairy leaves more on a child’s first lost tooth — $6.24 this year, which was also down from $7.09 in 2024.

While there’s no hard and fast rule about how much the tooth fairy should pay during those nocturnal visits, 20% of the parents’ surveyed said the payouts help enforce lessons about the value of money. That makes me smile from ear to ear.

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