Caring For Your Kids' Dental Health
Our children’s dentistry services provide gentle, compassionate care in a welcoming environment designed to put little ones at ease.
Whether it’s a routine check-up or specialised treatment, our experienced team ensures your child’s dental journey is positive and stress-free, setting the foundation for a lifetime of healthy, happy smiles.
What to do Before Your Child’s First Visit
- Brushing your child’s teeth before their dental visit, so we can better assess their oral hygiene. Please bring their toothbrush with you.
- Explain in advance to your child what they should do at the dentist - such as open their mouth. Consider a small reward for your children’s good behaviour.
- Take time to play “dentist” with your children at home. Practice, let your children open their mouth and brush their teeth for them. This helps your children get used someone touching their teeth.
- Read your children a story about visiting to the dentist.
- Speak positively about a dental visit. Whilst it’s not the same as a visit to the local amusement park, they do get to have a ride (the chair goes up and down, back and forth).
- Keep your own negative feelings of dental visit in check (if you have any). Do not use negative words like: needle, hurt, pain.
- Let your child look forward to and enjoy his/her first dental visits with the same enthusiasm as a visit to grandma’s.
What to Expect During the Appointment
This depends on their development, personality and dental needs. Each child is different so there is no one way that we do things.
During their first few visits, our main aim is to build a good relationship with your child. We make appointments as fun as possible and, if we can avoid it, don't want to do any invasive treatment. During your child’s check-up, we will do the following:
- Meet and greet your child. Make sure they don’t only feel comfortable but also have a fun in his/her first dental visit. Introduce all the toys we have such as “tongue kiss” “auto Robot chair” and how the sucking straw works. Your children will have an opportunity to touch the machine. We have many techniques just for kids, like "show and tell" to get them familiar with everything we use. It's fun to visit the dental clinic!
- Encourage to form correct brushing and oral habits in early childhood. We will demonstrate and reinforce the correct way of brushing and give them their own toothbrush. We want them to take pride in their pearly whites!
- We will examine all their teeth to make sure they are healthy. Identifying signs of early decay is vital in children. White patches on the teeth that do not seem to be able to be cleaned off are early stages of demineralization which eventually break down further to form holes much quicker than in adult teeth. Read why.
We accept Medicare’s Childrens Dental Benefits Scheme (CDBS) Gap Free!
- To check if your child is eligible or your balance you can call out friendly team and we can check on your behalf! We will just need your medicare number
- Eligible Children from 2-18 have $1000 every 2 years for specific dental treatment
- We may clean and polish their teeth with a soft rubber polishing cup. This is beneficial as it is fun and gentle, and gets the child used to having dental treatment. We want to start small with little things like a polish and then slowly build up from there.
- Very importantly we will check early signs of any abnormality of your child’s face and jaws including mal-alignment. Identify any early sign of abnormal habits and try to guide your child’s face and teeth to develop in more correct way.
- Individual oral hygiene and care instruction- taking the time to make sure both you and the child are shown how to keep your teeth healthy, and also giving advice on the appropriate amount of fluoride for them, diet and general tips.
- Finally, picking a prize and photo time! We have a treasure box for your child to pick something from after their appointment. We also take a photo of them and print it out to put into their own 'dental photo album' with a note of what they got done today, so you can look back on your child's dental journey. We let them decorate the background with stickers and colouring in, which is a great way to keep them occupied in the patient lounge! Taking photos over their years of growing also has the benefit that we can track their dental and facial development.
What to do After Your Child’s First Visit
It is very important to reinforce the positive aspects of your child’s recent dental visit. As you depart you should:
- Certainly reward their good behaviour.
- Use positive language to reinforce the positive experience of a dental visit - focus on whatever was the fun part.
- Make your children to look forward for next dental visit.
Dental Care Timeline for Children
Baby
If your baby is having difficulties feeding or maintaining suction, we recommend bringing them in to check for tongue-tie.
First Birthday
First dental check up! Generally, we recommend 6 months after the first tooth has erupted. Bringing your child in from an early age will help them become familiar with us and the environment and make future appointments much easier. We recommend seeing children every 6 months due to how quickly decay in children’s teeth spreads. We can assess their decay risk and if they are low risk, we will let you know and we can see them once a year instead.
1-5 years old
Dental check-ups every 6 months are the best way to catch things early. If we find something quickly, the treatment is much simpler and less stressful for the child (and saves you money!). We can let you know what areas are being missed during cleaning and show you specific techniques to get to those spots. By preventing the need to for big treatment on children, we reduce the risk of them having a bad experience and becoming afraid of going to the dentist. If your child is snoring or mouth breathing, we should try to find the cause early before it becomes an issue.
Many times, the check-up only involves using mirror and air. If the child is very young, we often do a 'lap exam' where we get the child to sit on the parent’s lap and we look at their teeth from there, so that they feel safe and secure without needing to be separated from you.
5-6 years old
This is a very important check-up time for several reasons:
At 5-6 we can start to check for any subtle signs of developing issues, such as mouth breathing, incorrect swallowing patterns, thumb sucking and more causing un-ideal jaw development. Early intervention can reduce the need for future orthodontic work. Read about this on our Myobrace page (page link).
It is also the time that we prepare you for adult teeth coming through! At 6, the permanent teeth begin to come through and we can screen for abnormalities. We can also give you an idea for what to expect, what is normal and what may be signs of a problem.
From 6 years old
Most children have the manual dexterity to brush their own teeth (though they should still be watched, otherwise they will probably do it in 10 seconds!). This is when we need to use the good relationship that we have formed with the child to then start to get them to take on the responsibility for their tooth cleaning. They can also start to use adult toothpaste.
If the child is at higher risk of decay or has tooth anatomy/development that is more prone to decay, we may consider putting fissure sealants on their permanent first molars to protect them from decay as the child grows up.
9-10 years old
Many of the permanent teeth have come through now. This is the time when we check how the canines (eye teeth) are going and take a big x-ray of all the teeth so we can look at the permanent teeth. At this age we can often see what their adult smile will look like and give you advice on any need for orthodontic treatment.
FAQs About Dentistry For Children
It might sound crazy at first but hear us out. We recommend seeing you when you are still pregnant with your child. Why? Research shows that the way that children get the bad bacteria that causes decay is actually through vertical transmission – which means it is passed from the mother’s saliva to the child (kissing, sharing spoons, tasting their food, etc).
This means that if your mouth isn’t healthy and you have high levels of bad bacteria, these will infect your child’s mouth once they are born – even before they have teeth! So once their baby teeth come through, they’re immediately exposed to these bacteria and the acids they produce. We want to limit this as much as possible by getting your bad bacterial count as low as possible by removing any decay and calculus, having awesome oral hygiene and limiting foods which allow these bacteria to thrive. The other important things is to teach you how to take care of your new child’s mouth as children can’t properly brush their teeth until they are 6 years old.
Baby teeth (primary teeth) are very different to adult teeth (permanent teeth). They are much softer and the outside bit that protects them (enamel) has a lot less mineral in it than adult teeth. So once a bit of decay starts, it spreads really quickly. Whereas in adult teeth, decay can progress very slowly (years), in children it can be a matter of months. Baby teeth also have much bigger pulps meaning that the decay hits the nerves inside the tooth much faster and causes pain. This means more involved and expensive treatment than just a filling. Children feel things differently to us adults, and often won't say anything if something is feeling off.
Diet: A huge part of decay is diet. Children tend to have a sweet tooth and also love to eat often. Anything sugary or containing simple carbohydrates like bread, juices, soft drinks, biscuits and sweets will give the bacteria in their mouth food to thrive on. It is less about the amount of sugar and more about how often they are having it.
Brushing: Did you know children don't really develop the manual dexterity to be able to brush their teeth properly until the age of 6? This means before this age, they do need help from their parents. It is very common that toothbrushing gets skimmed over and critical areas are missed, meaning bacteria is left there to cause decay.
Fluoride: Fluoride helps to strengthen the outside of the tooth and prevent decay spreading. As children tend to swallow a lot more toothpaste (they have not fully developed the ability to 'spit) and because they are still growing, we want to make sure they aren't swallowing too much fluoride. Children's toothpaste has less fluoride in it so they get less of these protective effects.
What can I do?
Replace any sugary drinks with plain water. Making sure your child is hydrated is very important.
Drink plain water after having anything sweet or acidic.
Diet and risk assessment: how high is the risk of decay in your child? How can we lower this?
Personalised oral hygiene care plan: brushing someone else’s teeth is hard! Let our preventative team work together with you and your child to see if you still need to help your child brush their teeth, and also, how to do this!
Get to any decay quickly! Children need to be checked more often than adults due to the fact that decay spreads so quickly and is very difficult to treat. Also, if there is decay on one tooth, the bacteria from that spread to the other teeth as well.
Work with us to make sure your child develops a positive attitude towards their oral health. If we can get them to take pride in their pearly whites, and enjoy taking care of them, then they are much better off in the long run.
Book Your Appointment Today
Call us at (02) 6766 1766 or book online to schedule your consultation. Whether it’s a simple check-up or more complex issue, our experienced team is here to help. Let us take care of your smile with the compassion and expertise you deserve!