Why Are Children’s Dental Visits Necessary?
It is recommended that children start to visit a dentist as soon as their first baby or deciduous teeth start to come through.
As a parent, you will notice that the first baby or deciduous teeth will be the upper two Central incisors and they will come through at roughly 12 months.
Early dental visits have been proven to reduce anxiety in later life in visiting a dentist and we know that 50% of the population is so scared of the dentist that they do not go even when they have significant dental problems.
The first visit will probably only take a few seconds however the child is slowly
getting used to the environment of a dental surgery. If you keep on doing this every six months, by the time the child has become an adult at 18, going to the dentist will just be a formality and will be no reason to become nervous.
Also, early visits encourage a child to look after their teeth into adulthood.
Even though children first have baby teeth, these have an impact on the permanent teeth. Firstly, any decay that causes a tooth infection may affect permanent dentition. Even if deciduous teeth need to be extracted early due to decay, this can cause misalignment of the permanent teeth.
For a child to visit the dentist at an early stage, it gives the dentist an opportunity to give appropriate oral hygiene advice and treatment.
In addition, problems can be identified early on such as missing adult teeth and localised dental disease.
For the above reasons, it is recommended that children be booked in as soon as their deciduous teeth come through but notwithstanding this, they should attend at any first available opportunity.