My daughter was just 3 years old when we brought her to the dentist for a prophylaxis or tooth cleaning. The visit was not for the purpose of cleaning per se, but for our daughter to meet and play with Dra. Salvador, our family dentist that is always in her dickies scrub pants. When hubby suggested the dentist visit the first time, I was hesitant because I thought that it was too early for our daughter to experience tooth cleaning as she just had her complete set of milk teeth. Until I read somewhere that bringing kids to a dentist at an early age will not only help the parents to learn their child oral health and unique oral needs, but it will also help the kids to be acquainted with the dentists and be at ease with them on the succeeding visits. And so we brought our daughter. Dra. Salvador surely knows what to do with toddlers. She greeted our daughter with a big smile and talked to her in a friendly voice. That was a pleasant first dentist experience for our sweet daughter.
After that visit, I realized that both parents and dentist play important roles in making a child’s first dentist visit a nice experience. As parents, it is our responsibility to choose a child-friendly dentist that is knowledgeable about young children’s oral health, teeth growth and development. On the other hand, the dentist must know techniques to ease our child’s fear and is focused on our child’s specific needs.
Even though a child will eventually lose all those milk teeth, still it is important to have their teeth checked at an early age to develop comfort zone and ease our child’s fear of dentist while monitoring how their permanent teeth are growing in.
