Dr. Allan Pike answers the question: Is it normal for a child to cry at the dentist?
In the video below, he addresses the question and shares a couple of the techniques used at Dr. Pike Dentistry For Children to help your child feel more comfortable and in control.
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Video Transcription: Is It Normal For My Child To Cry At The Dentist?
Hi, this is Dr. Allan Pike.
Some people ask me if it is normal for their children to cry at the dentist. I say it certainly is common but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are ways of treating children so that they really don’t cry at all.
You have to give them a little feeling like they have some control of things and then they won’t cry. Don’t force them and don’t hurt them and they will be just fine. You have to take the time to treat each child differently at their own speed and go with it slowly.
One Technique We Use
We have little gerbils in the office, so some of the techniques that we use to let children feel like they’re in control is we let them feed the gerbils. They love it and pretty soon they realize that they are in a safe place; they have never been here before but they realize that they are in a safe place.
Then it’s a matter of introducing things slowly. They call it progressive desensitization. It’s about doing things as fast as a child can tolerate it or as slowly as any child can tolerate it.
You just have to go at their own speed. We don’t start cleaning their teeth or doing a filling from scratch, we introduce it slowly. We may do it on a mannequin at first or on their fingernails at first.
Little by little they get accustomed to things and they realize how easy it is. They start playing around, had a lot of fun and they just smoothly go into whatever you want to do without force.
If you have any questions about things like that, please give me a call or send us an email.