Taking a Child to the Dentist for the First Time

The first visits are meant to be uneventful. Here is when to start, how to prepare a child, and what actually happens in the room.

Start early, and start before anything is wrong. The usual advice is to bring a child to the dentist once their first teeth appear, and certainly by their first birthday. At that age there is very little to examine, which is exactly the point.

A child who has been coming to a dental practice since before they can remember has no first visit to be frightened of. The room, the chair and the people are simply part of ordinary life. That is worth far more in the long run than anything we do clinically at that age.

Why the early visits are deliberately uneventful

Not much happens, and that is by design. A child might sit on your lap in the chair. We might count teeth, have a quick look, and let them hold the mirror. Sometimes they will not open their mouth at all, and that is a perfectly acceptable outcome for a first appointment.

The aim of those early visits is familiarity, not diagnosis. Each uneventful appointment builds the expectation that nothing bad happens here. If treatment is ever needed later, the child already trusts the setting, which changes how the whole thing goes.

Morning appointments usually work better than late afternoon ones for small children, when everyone is fresher and more patient. If you have more than one child, bringing the calmer one in first gives the other a chance to watch something unremarkable happen.

Preparing them without passing on your own nerves

Children read adults very accurately. If you are anxious about dentists, they will pick it up from your tone long before they understand the words. This is the single most useful thing a parent can attend to.

Keep the language neutral. Say we are going to have your teeth counted, or the dentist is going to have a look. Avoid words the child has not attached a meaning to yet, particularly hurt, pain, needle, injection and drill, even in the form of a reassurance. Saying it will not hurt introduces the idea that it might.

Do not use the dentist as a consequence for not brushing, and try not to promise a big reward for getting through it, because both suggest there is something to get through. Reading a picture book about a dental visit, or letting them come along and watch a parent be examined, works better than a briefing in the car.

Let the child answer questions themselves where they can, even slowly. Being spoken to directly, rather than about, makes a noticeable difference to how much a child engages with the visit. If they say no to something, we would rather stop and try again next time than push on and lose their trust.

What the first appointment involves

We say hello and let them look around for a moment. Then, if they are happy, a look at the teeth and gums, a check that everything is coming through as expected, and a glance at the bite. For a young child that may take a minute or two.

Most of the appointment is a conversation with you: how cleaning is going at home, what they drink and how often, dummies and thumb sucking if relevant, and whether there is anything you have noticed. We will show you how to brush a small child's teeth if that would help, because the technique is genuinely different from brushing your own.

Fluoride varnish is often applied from the age of three, as a routine preventive measure. It takes seconds and tastes of not very much. We would explain it to you first.

The practical things that help at home

Brush twice a day as soon as the first tooth appears, with a smear of fluoride toothpaste for the very young and a pea sized amount once they are older. Children generally need an adult to brush for them or to go over it afterwards until around the age of seven, because the manual skill is not there before then.

On diet, frequency matters more than quantity. Sugary drinks and snacks spread across a day do more harm than the same amount at one sitting. Water and milk between meals is the simplest rule there is.

Two other things come up often. Dummies and thumb sucking are usually harmless in the early years but can affect the way the front teeth meet if they continue, so it is worth discussing when to stop. And fruit juice, even without added sugar, is acidic and best kept to mealtimes rather than sipped through the day.

Booking

We see children as well as adults, and we are happy to book families together where the diary allows it. If you would like your child's first visit to be a gentle one, tell us that when you book and we will plan the appointment accordingly.

Related treatments

Related treatments

General Dentistry

Everyday dental care for the whole family.