We all want to give our children the best start in life and we strive to provide the best dental comprehensive care for all our young patients.
To show how important this core belief is to us, we offer all our under 5-year-olds a free dental examination twice a year (with a registered parent). This not only provides peace of mind for you but nurtures good habits which continue into later life.
What we offer:
– Diet and habit advice
– Fluoride treatments and fissure sealants
– White and metal fillings
– Orthodontic interception and referral
– Root fillings, abscess treatments and extractions
Our family friendly approach includes:
Being able to come into the surgery as a family, as we feel everyone can gain benefit from seeing a positive example from a parent. If an older sibling gets praise and reward (sticker) smaller ones usually very quickly follow suit even on a first visit. However, we are still happy to see children separately from other siblings, if you feel this is better for the individual.
We never rush having the time to go at your child’s own speed. Often early appointments are used to familiarise and orient your child to just visiting the practice, and it’s only when they are happy that we will even consider hopping on the ‘big chair’ to have a look inside their mouths. Allowing the child to proceed at their own pace, build confidence and allow them to understand we are here to help.
Benefits of early examination
Advice on all factors affecting children’s teeth are addressed, such as thumb sucking or the use of dummies. Hygiene appointments are available in cases where children are struggling with the concepts of cleaning, with guidance on oral hygiene instruction along with demonstrations from our friendly staff. We can even start before your little one arrives by looking after mum while she’s pregnant with any concerns covering a wide range of care from pregnancy gingivitis to fluoride supplementation for children.
Benefits of a good dental start in life
A child who has gained positive experiences of dental visits not only has a greater chance of remaining caries free but often grows up feeling confident about dental visits. It is a fact that children who start visiting dentists at a young age often take more interest and better care of their teeth throughout their life.
Helping you fight the good fight
Children are natural sugar seekers, who in this modern media driven world are bombarded with aggressive adverts constantly promoting sweets, snacking and sugar saturated fast foods. Even some ‘health drinks’ like fruit smoothies are wolves in sheep’s clothing. This makes the task for parents harder – Parenting choices become difficult in the light of this overall universal barrage driving children to demand sugary snacks…. So it’s good to know we are on your side and you have that backup of our professionals reinforcing your healthier food choices and helping younger patients understand the importance of twice daily brushing in caries prevention.
Helping you make the right choices
We offer advice on fluoride toothpastes, mouthwashes and brushes, diets and frequency of snacking, highlight the dangers of fizzy drinks. We can detect the signs and help you prevent early erosion in the deciduous dentition (baby teeth). A little known fact is that children’s enamel is thinner and less well mineralised than adult teeth, so it has less resilience to repeated attack from sugary foods. At each examination, the integrity of enamel is routinely checked so we can instigate interception early with a preventative approach before things cause sensitivity or pain.
We’ll monitor changes in our patients from baby teeth through to the eruption of adult teeth, keeping an eye on any need for braces and referring to a specialist at the correct time.
We only take X-rays if clinically required and can offer the full range to compliment any treatment and facilitate accurate diagnosis, such as locating missing teeth or detecting delayed eruption, and provide indications of angles of tooth eruption.
Prevention of decay
Our friendly clinicians can offer fissure sealants to protect vulnerable enamel grooves and surfaces, or topical fluoride applications to boost the hardness of enamel in teeth that are at decay risk, thereby avoiding the need for filling with vigilance.
Where enamel has failed to form correctly, for example hypoplasia or discolouration by the use of medicines or early childhood fevers/disease, we can effectively disguise and protect these delicate areas to provide a more pleasing tooth appearance.
Fillings
In the event that decay has already occurred, we offer a full range of metal to white fillings, unlike other practices where the choice is mercury-containing metals fillings only. We even restore baby teeth with a specialised fluoride-releasing white filling developed for the deciduous dentition, so the appearance of your child’s teeth can be preserved.
Nobody likes to see their loved one in pain from toothache. We can repair severely decayed/damaged teeth and accidental trauma, including cases where the tooth has been severely broken down. Our sympathetic approach to deeper medication and root filling can often save a tooth and has been very successful over the years. And of course we are on hand to help out in the worst case scenario if your child is ever unfortunate enough to have pain from a dental abscess or requires extraction.
Our aim
In short, we want encourage our younger clients to be confident about dental visits and their smiles, by providing the best treatment available to enable them to look after every aspect of their dental health and with your help protect and safeguard their teeth for a happy dental future.