Kid’s Concerns
Hi there. You may not know, but February is national children’s dental health month. Here at Mounts Dental Care North Little Rock, we are a family dental practice. We see people from infants up to 80 or 90 plus. I want to talk to you a little bit about kids because I often get questions from parents about things like what’s the right age to bring a child in? Or what’s the big deal, why would I want to bring a kid in? They’re going to lose their teeth anyway. Is it really that important?
Just wanted to hit on those two topics real quick. The first thing is, is what is the right age? Well, there’s lots of different opinions on that and some people want you to bring them in really early on, like around one or so. My thinking is that at that age, it’s going to be really hard for you to even be able to look or check anything.
What I like for my patients to do is to bring their kids in roughly when they’re around three years old. Just have them come in, sit with them when they’re here to get their teeth cleaned. It allows us to start having interactions with the kids and we have found that by the time it’s time to actually check their teeth or do things on them, they are so comfortable being here that it’s really no problems at all.
It’s really nice. We just have them come in, hang out with mom or dad, or when you’re here getting your teeth cleaned. Lots of times in the very first visit, they’re interested in letting you count their teeth very first thing. It really just help start that relationship off on a really easy calm level.
Another reason that we like to do that is really the fear factor. I have lots of adults that are in their 50s or 60s that still have dental anxiety and most of that stems from things that happened when they were kids. What we like to do is try to eliminate those fearful experiences early in hopes that as they grow older, that they won’t have any type of anxiety from there.
That’s one part of it. Another thing is really trying to eliminate problems early. Prevention is a big key in kids and finding cavities early on is a big help. It eliminates the amount of time there in the chair and how long you’re having to work on their teeth. Another thing is, is that dental pain actually causes several problems in kids.
Sometimes it goes unnoticed by parents, but it can cause problem sleeping, it can cause behavior issues and it can also even cause problems concentrating at school. Those are things that we want to avoid and lots of times the kids don’t even know why they’re doing those things and it can be coming from tooth problems.
If you’ve got little kids and they haven’t been to the dentist yet, or if you’ve got bigger kids and they’re looking for a place to go, we’d love to have them come in. Let us get a chance to meet them early on, try to get them comfortable with being here and I think you’ll find that kids do great with us.
We love having kids here, and we really love taking kids early on, giving them really good experiences so that things are easy for them really for their entire life as far as their dental needs go. Give us a call or check out our website. We’ve got some extra information on there as well, but we’d love to have you here.
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