What to Do About Your Child’s Crooked Teeth
When the surfaces of your teeth are damaged, badly stained or show crooked teeth, porcelain veneers and other dental options are great options to make your smile beautiful. However, some dental services for crooked or damaged teeth are not available to children. Crooked teeth can not only change how a person looks or talks, but they can actually cause serious dental problems over time. That is why you want to invest in dental and orthodontic options to help your child’s crooked teeth!
Correcting Your Child’s Crooked Teeth
Many children have crooked teeth due to genetics or a growing mouth that displaces the position of the baby teeth, thus displacing permanent teeth. Orthodontics is the best way to help correct your child’s crooked teeth. Typically, you would work with both a dentist and orthodontist to get straight and healthy teeth.
Braces are orthodontic appliances that are generally bonded to the teeth, which can make it much harder for a child to clean their teeth through brushing and flossing. That is why you work with a dentist consistently to make sure tooth erosion, tooth enamel damage, stains, gum disease and more aren’t forming. If you have a young infant with crooked teeth, don’t fret. This is natural, but it can get worse from pacifiers or thumbsucking. Read on for helping to stop the crookedness.
Tips for Thumbsucking, Pacifiers and Oral Hygiene
With severe cases of oral health issues caused by thumbsucking, a child’s teeth can change position enough to cause speech impediments. Speech may be difficult to understand because of how the air passes through the mouth when hitting the teeth. Or, bite and alignment can shift enough to also cause speech issues. Those issues will also affect how a child eats, bites and chews, as well as how the permanent teeth start to come into the mouth around age 7 or 8.
The goal is to stop the habit before changes to the teeth and jaws happen. At a young age, start encouraging your child to stop sucking their thumb. Instead of disciplining them for the habit, praise a toddler when they stop sucking the thumb or attempt to stop. Over time, that praise may be enough to stop the habit altogether.
The ADA reports that pacifiers can have the same effect on the baby teeth as thumbsucking does. A tip was to try quitting the thumbsucking by offering your child a pacifier instead. Then, take measures to start weaning off the pacifier. Weaning from the pacifier is easier after breastfeeding has stopped and easiest around age 2. To wean, try:
- Talking with your toddler often about why the pacifier can’t always be with them. Avoid clipping a pacifier to their clothes so it’s not always within reach.
- If an infant sleeps with a pacifier, try taking it away in small increments during the day. Have them go without in the mornings, then add in the afternoon, and then make it a strictly-bedtime thing.
- Try making the pacifier a crib-only benefit.
- When all else fails, stick to one or two pacifiers. Try poking holes in them (1 or 2 each day). Eventually graduate to cutting bits off of the pacifiers. Those gradual changes in how a pacifier feels in the mouth may make your infant not want the pacifier anymore.
Preparing for Cosmetic Dentistry
To be eligible for cosmetic dentistry options to improve crooked teeth or to spruce up your smile, you have to first get your smile healthy. You can do this through recommendations made by the American Dental Association:
- Brushing your teeth twice a day for 2 minutes at a time.
- Floss 1-2 times a day, making sure to use new floss each time. Floss up into your gum line between all the teeth and scrape your teeth as you go to remove extra plaque.
- Use mouthwash with fluoride to both strengthen your teeth and to kill decay-causing bacteria.
- Visit the dentist at least twice a year for dental cleanings and exams.
If you want to correct crooked teeth in the teen or adult years, orthodontic treatment is something you should definitely consider. However, have you ever noticed how celebrities can suddenly have a perfect smile overnight? This is due to cosmetic dentistry services transforming a crooked smile into something beautiful.
Cosmetic Options
- Porcelain veneers are custom-made tooth shells that go over your natural teeth. They are made of porcelain and can come in 18 different shades depending on your current smile and the smile you want. Once impressions are made of your teeth, custom-made shells are created in a lab for your smile. In one appointment, we shave off the very top layer of your natural tooth. A very thin layer of porcelain is then cemented permanently to the surface of your tooth. This creates a smooth, pearly-white finish.
- Teeth whitening is one of the easiest and affordable ways to improve your smile. in-office treatments with dental lights and specially-formulated dental gels, we can whiten your teeth in one visit. This is quicker than any other method out there and your teeth can be white for up to 7 years with good oral care. However, they won’t do much to correct crooked teeth, which is why you do teeth whitening after orthodontic care or you do the porcelain veneers option.
- Invisalign. This is a teeth-straightening service for adults that is offered at many dental offices. Ask about it at your consult.
Help Correct Crooked Teeth
Millions of adults and children alike have crooked teeth. It’s quite normal, however, it doesn’t have to be your normal. Cosmetic dentistry is an area devoted to perfecting the look of your smile if you’re an adult or older teen. For children, schedule a consultation with us about their crooked teeth. We can help correct the issues and work with an orthodontist if braces are needed. To schedule your consultation, call Dr. Evanson’s office at (720) 409-0008!
Leave a reply →
