Dental Care for the Whole Family
Well, I think as a family practice, we’re able to see, you know, families of all ages. Whether we have youngsters come in, we can handle that, we can address that. We always recommend that patients, when they have youngsters, they start to bring in their children with them when they’re coming in to get their teeth cleaned. I know it sounds like a little bit of a hassle, but the truth is, if your two or three year old comes in and sees you getting your teeth cleaned and they see, “Oh, this is easy, piece of cake.” They’re never ever fearful. They never learn that. Being scared of the dentist is a learned behavior, to a point. And for little ones, when they find out it’s easy, it’s piece of cake, they can do that.
Now, the other things we can do for our youngsters that come in is, in essence, it’s just simple things such as tell, show, do. Tell ’em what’s going on, show ’em the things that we used, let ’em hear the noises. And when they do that, it’s not a big deal. I mean, it’s really not a big deal.
The other thing, I mean, obviously for children, we have televisions so they can watch things. I mean, we have all kinds of movies and Disney and all kinds of things that they can do. For adult patients, we have the blankets that sometimes help them feel more comfortable. We have headphones that they can listen to. We can have all kinds of things that they can do. But ultimately, it’s just whatever a patient needs to feel comfortable. And sometimes it’s just a matter of listening to them, hearing their concern and addressing them, whatever that might be. But ultimately, families are great. A lot of times families start with one person comes in, usually the mom comes in and tries us out, and before we know it, the whole family’s here. And then their friends start to come in. So it’s a great thing. It’s a great thing.