Protecting Your Child’s Smile Through School Years

As a parent, it’s hard keeping up with everything our kids need – sports practice, birthday parties, homework projects – don’t let dental visits fall through the cracks! Around age 6, those baby teeth start loosening making way for permanent ones. This transitional stage needs consistent monitoring so children head into preteen and teenage years with healthy, functional smiles.

Thorough Dental Checkups & Cleaning

My Child is Old Enough for Adult Teeth Already?

It’s astonishing how fast kids sprout new teeth. Those wobbly front ones first start giving way to bigger, stronger permanent front teeth around age 6 or 7. By your child’s early teens, all adult molars push through too. We check kids more frequently during this time for:

• Little cavities forming between teeth before they cause pain
• Impacted adult teeth unable to erupt fully
• Twisted permanent teeth growing in the wrong direction
• Extra or congenitally missing teeth complicating spacing
• Detecting problems early makes correction through fillings, spacers or tooth extractions much simpler.

Fluoride & Sealants For Protection

School age is when back molars finish developing making them most vulnerable to decay-causing bacteria settling into pits and grooves. We apply quick, painless fluoride treatments and protective sealants onto susceptible grooves for extra armour against caries and acid damage. Investing a little now saves thousands in restorations later!

Injury Prevention Guidance

Kids playing contact sports are at high risk for accidentally losing or fracturing teeth. We fabricate athletic mouthguards protecting teeth and share guidelines on immediate emergency steps if trauma occurs like:

• Gently rinsing out missing tooth fragments
• Storing the tooth in milk while rushing to our dental clinic
• Avoiding aggressive manipulation of delicate jaw bones/tissues
• Treating knocked out teeth ASAP gives the best chance for reimplantation success!

Exploring Orthodontics

This transitional growth phase is an ideal time for our paediatric dentists to spot bite alignment issues and profile facial growth predicting problems needing future correction through treatments like braces or retainers.

Signs we monitor include crooked emerging teeth, mismatched upper and lower jaw sizes, incorrect spacing or dental crowding. Early orthodontic intervention when bones are still growing prevents extensive repairs later on.

We offer consultations on options like expanders, space maintainers or early phase 1 braces which gently guide permanent teeth/jaw bones into proper positioning. Detecting problems early allows for shorter and less complicated orthodontic treatments down the road resulting in properly aligned smiles!

We encourage scheduling an appointment to assess your child’s oral growth milestones at this transitional stage. Please call or email us. Investing in the right preventive care now pays big smiles dividends later on!