Kid-Friendly Family Dentistry 

As a kid-friendly dentist in Tacoma, we treat young children and are the best place to bring your preschooler and elementary-age child for their first checkup. We know many parents don’t bring their child to the dentist until they are much older. That's a mistake. Your child can develop cavities as young as their toddler years, and visiting our kid-friendly dentist office is one way to prevent them.

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What You Should Know
As a parent, you naturally want what is best for your child. Many parents don't realize how oral health and dental care factor into that. According to the Centers for Disease Control, tooth decay (cavities) is the most commonly occurring infectious disease among children. This leads to many children experiencing toothaches, missing days of school, and overall discomfort. Tooth decay isn't trivial; it can cause significant discomfort for your child and even make it difficult to eat, speak clearly, and engage in normal daily activities. If you live in the Tacoma area and think that this won’t happen to your child, statistically, it most likely will. Brushing and flossing at home will help, but it isn’t enough. You need to bring your child to our kid-friendly dentist office twice a year so we can examine and clean their teeth to remove the plaque and bacteria that can lead to cavities in the first place.

 

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 many children under age eight and understand how challenging it can be to get them excited about brushing their 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 Paul Sioda Dental, we are experts at working with young children and aren't under any 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 we have found helpful and suggest you try at home.

 

If you live in or around Tacoma, WA, we invite you to schedule an appointment with our dental office so that we can examine your child’s teeth and teach them how to brush properly. Even if your child is already brushing, they may be doing it wrong and missing a lot of plaque buildup. A simple video tutorial is a resource you can use at home.

 

You can find one on the American Dental Association’s website or even on YouTube. Playing a video that shows your child how to brush is a good reminder for them and, since they are used to receiving information this way, they are likely to receive and digest it better than if you reminded them.

 

Once your child is brushing correctly, it is time to turn your attention to how long they are brushing for. At Paul Sioda 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 its website devoted to these short videos, and watching them can help your child get used to brushing for the full two minutes. We have worked with families throughout the Tacoma 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 fun so your child will keep brushing as they grow.

 

Prevention
As a kid-friendly dental office in Tacoma, we are focused on preventive care. Itis much better for your child to visit us for regular cleanings than to come in only when they have a toothache. Fortunately, with preventive care methods, we can help your child avoid dental discomfort. In addition to cleaning their teeth, we also apply dental sealants. 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. With dental sealant, we place a protective layer on the teeth so nothing can get stuck in these ridges. The procedure is painless and fast because we simply brush a material onto the teeth and let it harden. At Paul Sioda Dental, we have found this to be a simple way to help prevent cavities in our young patients.

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HELPFUL RELATED LINKS

• 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