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Children are our future, and making that future bright includes giving them a bright smile! Bringing your child to a pediatric dentist may seem like a difficult experience, especially if they are fearful of seeing the dentist.
This fear is perfectly understandable, especially if they haven’t gone to the dentist very often or have never been at all. The key to an easy visit to a kid’s dentist in Houston is starting early and going regularly.
When Should My Child See the Dentist?
Your children should visit the dentist for the first time right after their first tooth appears, but no later than 12 months old. By starting this early, they will begin to form a relationship with your Houston dentist and see that visits involve non-invasive and pain free checkups.
This helps eliminate the fear of going and maintains a healthy regimen that prevents major diseases and decay from occurring. As your child grows, your Houston pediatric dentist will increase the array of care that your child receives.
What Sort of Care Do Children Get?
In general, children receive the same care that adults do at the dentist. However, for younger children, there is more of an emphasis on preventative care that does involve an intense amount of work.
As they grow, the checkups will become more thorough to encompass all of the new teeth coming in. Additionally, they may seek to apply a dental sealant to molars as they come in. Dental sealants help protect the molars against cavities by filling in the grooves on the crown of the tooth, making them easier to brush and clear away bacteria.
X-ray imaging is performed once per year (more often if there is a suspected issue) to get a view of all the teeth and how they are developing.
Monitoring the development of early teeth is very important as they will be setting the stages for the adult teeth that come in later. A Houston pediatric dentist will use x-ray imaging to see the developing teeth that have not come through the gums yet and determine their course, ensuring they erupt (break through the gums) properly and don’t interfere with adjacent teeth.
If the alignment of new teeth will be a problem, the dentist may advocate for braces or other corrective dental apparatuses. The purpose of these corrective measures is to ensure the adult teeth come in perfectly.
What About if My Child Has an Emergency?
Sometimes accidents do happen and a child’s tooth may get fractured, chipped, or knocked out entirely. A fractured tooth may require a filling to strengthen it, where an avulsed (knocked out) tooth may be replaced.
When a tooth is knocked out, it can sometimes be saved by preserving it in a container of milk and seeing an emergency pediatric dentist in Houston right away. If it cannot be saved (or possibly not found), the dentist will take other measures to prevent the other teeth from shifting.
Having a complete array of teeth is important, as a missing tooth can change the whole geography of a mouth. Even if it was only a baby tooth that was lost, if it’s still a while before the adult tooth comes in, the other teeth can shift, and the adult tooth will cause problems when it does erupt.