A Kids' Dentist Can Be Your Partner in Oral Health

Being a kids' dentist can be greatly rewarding. It also comes with its own unique set of challenges, mostly springing from the fact that a children’s dentist works with young, wiggly patients. Though often more compliant than their adult counterparts, children have an intrinsic fear of the things they do not understand, making it even more important that we take the time to explain each step of the process to them. Additionally, parents can be overly frightened of having their children's teeth worked on, making for a sometimes tense situation. All of this is challenging enough but is made even more complex by the fact that children’s teeth are unique from a biological perspective. Children are still growing and developing, which includes their teeth. As such, it takes special attention and care to help the teeth while being aware that the jaw bone is yet to solidify fully. In a sense, we have a special opportunity, with children’s dentistry, to make an impact while the mouth is still developing. 

A children’s dentist is not just a practitioner who specializes in small teeth. The largest part of our job is to educate the children and parents with regard to great oral health and habits. As difficult as it may be for some people to believe, we would actually prefer to see you less. If, as your child’s dentist, we could only have the pleasure of seeing you twice a year for teeth cleanings, we would consider it a job well done. In order to get there, however, we need to help you create healthy habits in your children. These habits, once developed, will carry over into adulthood and ensure that your child has extremely healthy teeth for the rest of their life. 

Of all the habits we discuss, perhaps the most difficult to change are eating habits. Recently a comprehensive study was performed that found some alarming statistics when it comes to children’s access to sugar. Most children love sugar and left to their own devices would consume far too many snacks with a high sugar content. This is why parental supervision is so important. This study found that only 25% of parents follow the recommendation dietary limits on sugary snacks. These parents followed the guidelines of not allowing their children high sugar content snacks more than twice a week. On the opposite end of the spectrum, at around 14%, were parents who allowed their children to snack on these kinds of snacks three or four times in a given day. The majority of parents, around 60%, were in the middle by allowing this kind of snacking at least once per day.  As a kids dentist, we can help you by providing ideas for how to replace sugary snacks with healthy ones. 

We know that working together can produce positive results and that you as a parent, have your child’s best interest at heart. As a kids' dentist, we have seen dentist/parent partnerships work in the past and believe that this is the best solution for addressing the snacking challenge.  Given that over 93% of parents, according to the study, brush their children’s teeth at least once per day, we have a lot of encouragement that new habits can be formed and children can start eating healthier foods again. 

The Process a Veneers Dentist Uses to Restore Teeth

As a veneers dentist, we can restore teeth that have been damaged while simultaneously improving their appearance.  Made of porcelain, dental veneers have become a powerful tool for correcting numerous dental challenges. When you consider the array of dental problems that can be fixed with dental veneers it is easy to forget that they are, in fact, a wafer-thin strip of porcelain which is incredibly brittle in its unattached state. One the veneer is attached to the tooth, replacing some of the enamel, it takes on the strength of a normal tooth and is almost as durable as a naturally occurring tooth would be. It is due to the veneers strength and ability to blend in with the natural teeth that we use if for repairing chipped teeth, correcting unsightly spaces between teeth, adjusting misaligned teeth, and even to improve the color or size of your teeth. 

While dental veneers are an incredible solution to many minor problems, they are also able to solve these problems while blending seamlessly into your mouth. Once a veneer is in place, no one will be able to tell the difference between your regular teeth and the one that is repaired using the dental veneer. To do this, we will need to see you at least twice. The first time is to consult and give you an idea of what to expect. Following this we will prepare the tooth to receive the dental veneer. On the second visit, we will actually place the veneer and make sure that it is a perfect fit. 

Dental veneers, visit one:
During the first visit, we will give you a lot of information, after which we will focus on making sure the tooth is ready for the veneer. To do this, we will get an exact color match, by comparing your teeth with a shade card. This allows us to pick, not just the coloring, but, the shading to match your mouth. If all of your visible teeth are getting veneers, you can simply select the shade that you like.  During this visit, two important procedures will take place. First, our veneers dentist will trim the enamel on the tooth. A minimal amount of enamel, as low as between 0.5 and 0.7 millimeters, will be removed. This, quite simply, is to make room for the dental veneer to take the place of this enamel. Once the enamel has been trimmed, we will take an implant of the area. This gives us the measurements we need to create your veneers. Before you leave we will also place a temporary veneer onto your tooth in order to protect it from sensitivity. 

Dental veneers, visit two:
Once the veneers have returned from the lab, it is time to fit them. During this visit, our veneers dentist will be fitting the veneers and working to ensure that they are a match. To that end, we will place them, remove them, trim them, and replace them multiple times until we are satisfied that the fit is perfect and has no adverse effect on your bite patterns. We will also check the shading to ensure the dental veneer fits in with the rest of your teeth. Once this is completed, we can cement the veneer in place and complete the restoration for you.