Sometimes I sit and I think to myself how interesting it is that people from different cultures can react to the same situation in a completely and totally different way. For example my wife and I spent about four years living in Central America. Now the country that we lived in El Salvador is not an extremely advanced country, but at the same time the people are not living in the Stone Age. They have access to the majority of the things that we in the United States or in Great Britain have access to it they have a relatively decent set of medical facilities, and they have access to cell phones, the Internet, cable television, and electricity and running water are constants here. So then you would think that since they have a lot of the admittees that people in the United States and Great Britain have that their way of seeing things would be somewhat similar. Nothing could be farther from the truth
Let’s take something extremely simple like dental care. If you live in the United States or Great Britain and you have teeth that are extremely crooked, or if your children have teeth that are extremely crooked you are going to do whatever you can to get some type of braces for your child. If you are worried about your child being teased for having braces you will then get invisible braces for them. Now it is understood that buying braces will cost a little bit of money, but most people are willing to spend this money because again they realize that for the long run it is going to be in the child’s best interests to have these types of braces.
This is exactly what my wife and I did for our children while we were living in Central America. You should have seen the reaction that some of the people had. They basically thought that we were wasting our money on something that was not relevant. I could not believe that our viewpoint on something like this was so drastically different. Do not get me wrong I respect the viewpoint of the people who I was around, especially since the majority of them made right around $600 a month. But still for my opinion, and I’m sure from the opinion of many people who live in the United States and Great Britain if you have the financial means to provide your children with dental care you should do it.
I know that I personally as a child benefit from having braces. When I was younger getting clear braces was not an option so I had to deal a little bit with the ridicule that children give to people have braces, but let me tell you in the long run I am extremely happy that I got my teeth fixed. I never regret having dentist braces put on my teeth as a child.