Helping Your Child Trust the Dentist

Dental anxiety can consume even the toughest adults. For children, the dentist can be even scarier. Imagining the pain and the drills and the noise of their teeth getting drilled away can be a nightmare. Thankfully, there are steps that you can take to help your child trust the dentist. You can help your children get past their fears and their dental anxiety. Dental anxiety can start in childhood and last a lifetime. Don’t even let your children develop it in the first place! Hopefully, these tips can help you help your kids become more comfortable with the dentist.

Be Honest but Don’t Lie

Tricking your children into going to the pediatric dentist in Houston or telling them lies about the dentist can cause them to mistrust you and mistrust the dentist even more. The best thing you can do is to treat a dental visit just like any other routine appointment. Be calm when you tell them about the appointment and tell them ahead of time. Giving your child a few days to mentally prepare themselves for a visit can reduce some of the fear.

Answer your children’s questions about the dentist, but avoid any scary words like “pain” and “shots” to the best of your ability. You should leave most of the explanations to the dental professionals.

One important thing to keep in mind is to never use going to the dentist as a threat. If you tell your kids that if they eat too much candy, then they will have to go to the dentist, in reality, you are threatening them with a visit to the dentist and they will begin to develop a fear of even a routine cleaning.

Of course, we are happy to help you. Give us a call if you want any tips on how to get your child to the pediatric dentist near me. Our staff is very friendly, and we will do our best to make your visit a pleasurable one.