My Kid Got Hit By a Car. I Wasn’t Expecting One Consequence in Particular.

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I’ve found myself in a startling situation that I’m not sure how to approach. Last year, my middle child, 11, was struck by a car while riding their bike. The first seconds of that phone call were the worst moments of my life. Fortunately, though, they were not seriously injured, although they did spend a couple of weeks on crutches. Police determined that my child was at fault and ticketed them. Even so, the driver’s insurance company is going to offer us a settlement that I wasn’t expecting and didn’t think to ask for. It may be just a few thousand dollars after the medical bills are paid.

Obviously, I’m not just going to give three grand to a 12-year-old, but what do I do with it? It doesn’t seem fair for them to get a bunch of money for doing something frankly pretty dumb (they rode right in front of that car), and it doesn’t seem fair to my other kids for one to get a windfall. Should I use it for family needs? Take a cheap vacation with the kids? Save it for his first car purchase?

—Wasn’t Trying to Be Litigious

Dear Wasn’t,

How frightening! I’m so glad your child was OK. Corporations may be people but insurance companies are inhuman, so you should not feel in any way guilty about your family’s minor windfall. Indeed, as someone whose cycling family member was hit by a car and who has come to understand he should have sought legal counsel way earlier in the game, I would recommend you get in touch with an attorney—despite your unlitigious nature—to make sure that you are not, in fact, entitled to more money.

Whatever you end up getting, you should not treat the money as belonging to your 12-year-old. Consider it a payment for the pain and suffering you went through during that phone call, not to mention the hours and hours you have spent in doctors’ waiting rooms and talking on the phone to, yes, insurance companies. Use it to pay for the things you always have to pay for, in order to make your family’s life perhaps 3 percent easier for a while. And consider spending a little of your time advocating for safer bike infrastructure in your neighborhood, so that kids are less likely to get hit by cars, and so fewer injured 11-year-olds receive tickets from the police. (Come on—did that really happen?)

Dear Care and Feeding,

My daughter turns 2 later this month, and she refuses to let me brush her teeth. For a while she would let me brush a little, but one day she shook her head, like, “Nuh uh,” and since then she’s refused. I’ve tried three different toothbrushes and different toothpaste. I’ve tried letting her “brush” her own but that mainly consists of her chewing on her toothbrush and licking the toothpaste off. I’ve tried letting her hold her toothbrush as I sneak in a different toothbrush and brush. I’ve tried brushing mine alongside her, and she pretends to do what I do but she won’t touch her teeth with the toothbrush. I think she doesn’t like the feeling of the toothbrush touching her teeth. What else can I do?

—Cutting Teeth

Dear Teeth,

My inclination was to say “Let her chew on her toothbrush, she’ll be fine!” but I thought maybe I should consult a professional, so I called Dr. Meghan Bastin, a pediatric dentist and a professor at the West Virginia University School of Dentistry. She said that she’s had parents of reluctant young patients find success by brushing teeth while a child is in the bath—“Sometimes the problem is that they don’t like the wet feel of a toothbrush, but if they’re already wet they don’t notice.” She’s also seen parents take their kids out of the bath, swaddle them in a warm towel, and then give their kid’s teeth a quick brush while the child is warm, comfy, and helpfully immobile.

Yes, this is brushing their teeth without their consent. To my mind, toothbrushing falls into the same category as changing a kid’s diaper even though they don’t want you to, or wiping their butt while they’re trying to kick you, or picking them up and carrying them away from the public place where they’re having a tantrum. Toothbrushing is the kind of thing that I think you sometimes just have to freaking do to a kid, bodily autonomy be damned. You may disagree! It is OK for us to have different parenting philosophies.

Dr. Bastin also suggested what she calls a “knee to knee” position, which pediatric dentists like to use in the office. You’ll need another adult to pull this off. The two adults sit knee to knee, and the toddler sits on one adult’s lap, legs wrapped around their waist. Your daughter would then lean waaaaaay backward to face the other adult, opening her mouth wide—this gives everyone a nice view into her mouth, and can make brushing easier.

Above all, though. Dr. Bastin asked—as all dentists have asked since the first dentist crawled from the primordial soup—if your child has seen a dentist yet. Try to find a pediatric dental specialist, though they can sometimes be hard to find. In addition to all the other useful tasks dentists do (cleaning teeth, looking at X-rays, not being covered by insurance), they can serve as really great authority figures. “Somehow, just hearing it from somebody else can make all the difference,” Dr. Bastin said. We often found, when our children were young, that they would blow off a hundred reminders to eat their vegetables or whatever, but if the pediatrician said it even once, our kids took her seriously. There can be something magical for a small child in a person wearing a white coat telling them what’s important.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My husband and I were only financially able to have one child. We both grew up in big extended families and didn’t want our son “Trevor” to miss out on those experiences. Luckily, my husband’s sister and her four kids live nearby. She and her husband are wonderful and we’ve always been close. We both love the extended family, and Trevor is friends with all the cousins. Since he was born nine years ago, he’s learned lots of important kid stuff around sharing, compromising, and not always having adult attention. Plus, we get to have the cousins and all the kids’ friends over to our home all the time and it’s a little bit like having more kids of our own.

Money has been hard for their family for a few years now, and my brother-in-law just got a much better job offer about two hours away. The family will be moving after Christmas. They’ve seriously suggested that we move too, and we’re trying to decide whether it’s a good idea. My husband works remotely so his job wouldn’t change. I’m a teacher, and I could easily get another job elsewhere in the state without losing any seniority perks. Both towns have roughly the same cost of living. How do we weigh the downsides and benefits to our kid? We don’t have other local family, but we have local friends and a life here. Our town is small and so is the new one, so you kind of get what you get, vis-à-vis making adult friends or being involved in stuff.

—On the Fence

Dear Fence,

What a fascinating opportunity! You’ve formed an incredibly special and valuable bond with your husband’s family, and it’s a wonderful thing that they suggested you accompany them to their new town. I can see why you’re seriously considering it. If it were me, I would probably leap at the offer. If you’re feeling more cautious, here are a few things to think about.

Of course, you don’t yet know what things will be like when your brother- and sister-in-law move to Town B after Christmas. It’s hard to make a decision this big in that kind of information vacuum. But you’ve got an ace up your sleeve: You don’t have to! There’s no reason you have to decide whether to move right away.

Why not wait to see how it feels once they’re gone? That way you’ll start to understand how much you miss what they bring to your lives. You’ll know how often you really see them when you’re separated by a two-hour drive. You’ll know better how Town A feels without them there, and to what extent your local friends and Trevor’s local friends are filling in the gaps.

Plus, you’ll have them in Town B, reporting back. How do they like it? What are the schools like? Are they making friends? Have they heard about a really affordable house, in great condition, located the perfect distance from theirs (three blocks)?

As the school year ends, sit down with your husband and with Trevor—he should be included in this discussion as well—and talk about what you’ve learned. That gives you plenty of time to join them in Town B for the new school year, if that’s what you decide to do. I’m willing to bet that what your family wants will be much clearer then than it is now. Good luck!

—Dan