If someone hasn’t come in in a certain number of years and they’re ashamed or they’re embarrassed to come in we need to find out why and we need to figure out how we can do better and how we can help our patients in order to get them to come in and to basically trust the dental world again and how to alleviate that anxiety and make them feel better about themselves because if they’ve been drawn away for a certain number of years there has to be a reason why nobody just stays away from the dentist just because there’s always a reason. It’s either anxiety, it’s fear, they don’t like being there, it’s the fear of having the needle or you know having procedures done so those are things that we need to talk about we need to figure out we need to get down to the bottom of why and do better and figure out how we can tackle these things together. When developing anxiety as an adult and fearing that you’re going to pass those traits down to your children or your family members the biggest thing that helps is usually exposure therapy and bringing your children in with you to your dental appointments bringing them in at a young age.
We recommend a dental checkup for children as soon as six months old or as soon as the first tooth pops out. Your children should be seen regularly at the dental office and ensuring that they be seen so often kind of curates that anxiety and it leaves no room for anxiety because if they’re familiar with the dental office and they’re familiar with what the environment is and getting cleanings done and getting checkups done there should be no room for fear when they get older because they’ve already been exposed to that type of environment and they already know what to expect. So the older that they get the harder that it gets to transition to just coming to the dentist and not being scared because when you get older that’s when the fear starts to overtake you because those are when the thoughts kick in and you’re thinking about you know an injection or you’re thinking about getting a cavity filled or you’re you know you’re scared of having a certain procedure done but I think the most important thing is bringing your children in from a young age and making sure that they’re exposed to the environment and introducing them to the doctor and myself and introducing them to the staff and making it well known that it’s a homey and friendly environment and that there’s nothing to be scared of.
