Did you know that children dentistry may prevent your child from needing braces down the road? It is extremely common for kids to need braces in order to straighten their teeth and to make sure that their smile looks amazing as they grow. When necessary, this is an important step for your child’s health. The challenge is that orthodontics is expensive and can be uncomfortable so if you can prevent the need for them – your child will be better off.
There are several ways that we can help, and it starts by keeping your kids teeth healthy and in good condition. We recommend that you brush their teeth at least twice a day and floss when possible. Additionally, it is important to limit their sugar intake and make sure that they don’t eat or drink anything other than water after bedtime. This will help their teeth to stay healthy and cavity free.
In our children dentistry office, we can clean their teeth and remove the bacteria and plaque that you weren’t able to get to at home. No matter how often you brush, some places are hard to reach without professional tools – especially with a wiggling child. Try to bring them in for teeth cleanings twice a year. This is important because we want to catch any cavities early on. During these regularly scheduled visits, we can identify any signs of an infection and treat it right away before it has the opportunity to spread. By doing so, we can prevent your child from experiencing a toothache.
By keeping your child’s teeth healthy, we are helping them to stay strong. This is important because when their teeth are weak, they are more likely to fall out during a monkey bars accident or while playing sports. Additionally, infected teeth may need to come out so keeping teeth healthy allows your child to keep their baby teeth as long as possible.
Baby teeth are important because they hold a place for adult teeth to come in. When kids lose their baby teeth before the adult ones are ready to come in, other teeth can start to shift. This can create a major problem with overcrowding. In this scenario, the adult teeth may not have a spot to grow into and come in behind other teeth or come in crooked. This creates the need for orthodontics like an expander or braces. When we keep teeth healthy, we are also helping your child to keep their baby teeth and avoid the overcrowding that can naturally occur when teeth fall out too soon.
We can also suggest ways to keep your child from sucking their thumb as they age. Thumb sucking is a common reason for needing to get braces later on in life because it pushes the top teeth forward. While it is natural for children to self-soothe when they are young, they shouldn’t continue as they get out of the toddler years so if this is an issue at home, schedule an appointment with our children dentistry office