Kid Friendly Dentist St. George, UT

First Dental Examination – Begins at Age 1

Your little one should have his or her first dental appointment after the first tooth appears and by his or her second birthday. While children do lose their baby teeth, or primary teeth, these teeth are instrumental in helping children speak and chew properly. Additionally, primary teeth create a path for their permanent adult teeth to follow when they erupt. Dental check-ups are also important opportunities to create a good foundation for ongoing oral hygiene and give parents the chance to ask any questions they have about a child’s oral health.

In addition to regular examinations and cleanings, we may recommend further services to protect your child’s oral health. We also provide sealants and fluoride in office. Preventative sealants help protect teeth from decay. They are made of clear plastic and are applied to pits and grooves in the teeth. Before applying sealants, the tooth is cleaned and dried. Fluoride treatments are also essential to preventing tooth decay for both children and adults and are part of a regular dental examination and cleaning. You will want to bring your little one to our office twice a year to achieve good oral health and hygiene from an early age.

Resources You Can Use at Home

In addition to visiting our kid friendly dentist office, it is important that you practice good oral hygiene at home and teach your child to do the same. In our dental office, we work with a lot of children under age eight and understand how challenging it can be to get them excited about brushing teeth. Kids are busy and asking them to stop riding bikes, building Legos, or playing dress up to brush their teeth can lead to conflict fairly quickly. We get it. At Red Cliffs Dental, we can work with young children and are under no illusion that they are fascinated by oral health. Our job, however, is to change their opinion of dental care and show them that it can be fun and interesting. This way they will want to brush and floss their teeth, even without being told. With that in mind, we have a few resources that we have found to be helpful and suggest that you try them at home.

Once your child is brushing correctly, it is time to turn your attention to how long they are brushing for. At Red Cliffs Dental we encourage all of our patients to brush for two minutes, twice a day, regardless of how old they are. This, however, can be difficult for young children that find it hard to focus on a task or to stay still. As a kid friendly dentist, we want them to brush their teeth but staying still isn't a requirement. Try making it fun to brush teeth by playing their favorite song for two minutes and letting them dance and brush. You can also play a two-minute video clip or cartoon for them while brushing. The American Dental Association has an entire section of their website devoted to these short videos and watching them will get your child used to brushing for the full two minutes. We have worked with families throughout the St. George area and have found that using media works far better than standing there with a stopwatch. The goal is to create positive associations between dental care and having fun so that your child will continue to brush their teeth as they grow.

Prevention

As a kid friendly dentist office in St. George, we are focused on preventative care. It is far better for your child to visit us for a regular teeth cleaning than to only see us with a toothache. Fortunately, by using preventative care methods we can help your child to avoid experiencing any dental discomfort. In addition to cleaning their teeth, one of the ways that we do so is with dental sealant. Many children have deep ridges in their teeth. When they bite down and chew food, bacteria, food particles, and plaque can become trapped in those ridges and eventually they will create tooth decay. These areas are particularly difficult to clean with a toothbrush alone, so even the most fastidious of parents may find it challenging to keep cavities at bay. By using dental sealant, a protective layer is placed onto the teeth so that nothing can become stuck in these ridges. The procedure is painless and fast since all we need to do is brush a material onto the teeth and allow it to harden. At Red Cliffs Dental, we have found this to be a simple way to prevent our young patients from getting cavities.

Regular Fluoride Treatments

A kid friendly dentist creates a healthy and comfortable professional environment, providing the age-appropriate dental treatment a child needs for healthy teeth. Red Cliffs Dental is a kid friendly dentist office in the greater St. George area.

As a kid friendly dentist, we strive to create a comfortable and welcoming environment to help kids have a positive experience with visiting the dentist. It is no surprise that many children, and adults, are not always fond of dental treatment. However, by creating a positive experience with the dentist at a young age, children will have a more positive view of oral hygiene as a whole.

We will also help to instill healthy oral hygiene habits the parent or guardian can continue at home, to help make brushing teeth fun for the child. Our goal is to help children maintain healthy teeth as they age so that they can continue to have healthy teeth later in life. We will customize treatment to the child's needs and help ease them into a regular dental routine.

• American Dental Association (ADA) . Glossary of Dental Terms . 2015
• American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry® (AACD) . Home Page . 2015
• WebMD . WebMD’s Oral Care Guide . 2015

This Guide Will Include ✔ Cosmetic Options ✔ Factors and Considerations ✔ $450 Savings ✔ And More!