Hawaii Family Dental Centers: Children's Dentistry

When should parents bring their child to a pediatric dentist or their family dentist?

There is a two-part answer to this question:
First, if anything looks funny or something unusual happens to your child's mouth/teeth, please have your child examined by a pediatric dentist or a family dentist.

Here are a few examples:

Primary (baby) teeth erupt by 9 months of age
If child falls and injures any baby teeth
If gums bleed often with no apparent reason
If chalky white area cannot be removed by brushing
If baby teeth erupt and line up in an unusual manner
Any funny looking spots on teeth or inside mouth appear

Second, all children should be seen for a visual examination by age two (even if they need to sit in their parent's lap.)

If my young child has decay on his or her front teeth (at age 2 to 4) do we have a choice of fixing the teeth or leaving the teeth to shed at age 6 to 7? If we do get them fixed, do we have a choice not to have those ugly steel caps on the front teeth?

To delay attending to obvious area of decay on a child of 2 years to 4 years old is to ask for big trouble in many cases. If the decay has progressed deep inside the tooth, the pulp (nerve) will abscess and your child will develop a tooth, gum, and bone infection. This can cause pain, swelling, fever, malaise as well as disturbances in the enamel of the permanent teeth forming in your child jaws.

The ugly steel caps are very ugly, but very strong. There are ways of putting a tooth colored covering on the steel crown and thereby improve the looks. There are also plastic (composite) tooth colored crowns, which are very esthetic, but not quite as durable as the metal caps.