Your child’s dental health is essential as it could affect their growth development and the way they could move their mouth. With that, you shouldn’t neglect taking care of their health by solely focusing on how many times they brush their teeth. Depending on your child’s situation, they might need dental braces to make them comfortable and bring out their best smile.
Ideally, you should bring your child to see the dentist at least every six months just to check the process of their oral development. If your dentist suggested that they visit an orthodontist to consult with having braces, you should ensure that you look for the best one in your city.
Listed below are the reasons why your child may need braces:
1. Presence Of Crossbite
One of the most common and immediate reasons your child needs to have braces is that they could be crossbites. This is a situation wherein their teeth aren’t properly aligned once they try to do a bite. Ideally, all of their upper teeth should be in front of their entire lower teeth. While it might seem harmless, crossbites can help develop chipped teeth and asymmetric development of the jaws, which could lead to terrible jaw pain.
If you choose to avoid making your child wear dental braces, the treatment could require a more extensive procedure over time, including jaw surgery. To prevent your child from undergoing surgery, allowing them to have dental braces would be the best option for their oral health.
2. Crooked Teeth
Apart from crossbites, crooked teeth are another leading reason why your child may need dental braces. Ideally, your child would want to have the perfect smile. With perfectly aligned teeth, they can feel confident every time they bring out their teeth to smile for pictures. Moreover, they won’t shy away from communicating with other people and notice that their attention is heading towards their teeth. To allow your child to enjoy properly aligned teeth, they should have dental braces immediately.
A dental brace will help eliminate crooked teeth by allowing every single tooth to be aligned to their gums perfectly. This will give them a picture-perfect smile that they’ll surely appreciate, especially when they get older.
3. Teeth Crowding
Another common reason why your child may need dental braces is that their mouth is experiencing teeth crowding. This happens when their mouth is growing more teeth than their gums can handle. While tooth extraction would be a great option to limit the number of teeth, they might not leave your child’s mouth with proper alignment, making them crooked over time.
With teeth crowding, an orthodontist will need to remove some extra teeth, usually around the molars, and install dental braces after the recovery period. With lesser teeth, they can allow the dental braces to work their way to distribute each tooth evenly on their gums, giving them a perfect smile. While the process can be lengthy, the result would last them for a lifetime.
4. Open Bites
If your child fails to bring their front teeth together when they take a bite, they could be suffering from an open bite. This is a situation when their front upper and lower teeth are slightly slanted outward, not allowing both teeth to touch each other when taking a bite.
There are plenty of reasons why a person might have an open bite. It could be because they used to thumb suck or use a pacifier or other item intensively, which can affect the position and growth of their teeth.
With the help of dental braces, they can allow their teeth to be aligned together perfectly, allowing their teeth to touch together with every bite.
5. Teeth Growing On Wrong Spots
Ideally, your child’s teeth should only grow on the edge of their gums. However, there might be some cases that their permanent teeth could develop on the body of their gums which can cause pains and odd teeth appearance.
To bring down any odd teeth on your child’s mouth, you should consider having a dental brace as they could help to put them back to where they should be slowly. However, the process can be extremely lengthy, depending on the position of the permanent teeth. With that, you need to prepare for years before you can see your child have the perfect smile.
6. Speech Difficulty
There are various reasons why your child may be having speech issues. But if you notice that your child is having trouble saying a specific word out of their mouth, their teeth alignment could contribute to that problem. To help your child improve their speech challenges, you should consider bringing them to an orthodontist and see if dental braces would be an excellent option for your child.
If your orthodontists suggested that your child have dental braces immediately, you should have one for your child. In this way, you can help your child improve their speech, allowing them to speak any words they want to say fluently.
7. Issues With Biting And Chewing
If your child complains about how they’re always in pain every time they try to eat as they usually bite their tongue or the insides of their cheeks, improper teeth alignment could contribute to their pain. Ideally, your child should eat comfortably with any meals that you serve them, not just with soft ones.
To help your child eat comfortably without bringing them any pain, you should drive them to an orthodontist right away so they can assess the alignment of their teeth and see if having dental braces would be the best option for your child.
8. Genetics
No matter how much you try to take care of your child’s teeth alignment, if you or your partner had braces when you were a child, you could be passing your genetics to your child, making them wear dental braces as they get older.
If you fear that your child could develop severe teeth alignment issues, as you and your partner had one, you might want to consider visiting an orthodontist and have them wear dental braces right away. This will help to prevent any possible issues, allowing your child to have perfectly aligned teeth. This can dodge bullets, especially if you and your partner’s cases were intense when you were younger.
How Long Do Dental Braces Last
As your child needs to have dental braces right away, you might wonder how long they should wear them to have a perfect set of teeth. On average, a person could wear dental braces for one to three years. However, this might change depending on the mouth’s situation. This includes how crooked your teeth are and how intense the case could be.
Moreover, your brace’s material choices can also affect the span of the treatment. You can choose between having metal, clear aligners, or lingual braces. While clear aligners might look more natural and have the flexibility option, they can be tricky, especially since you need to follow special instructions every time your child wears them. If you’d like to prevent people from seeing that your child is wearing dental braces, a lingual brace would be a better option as they go behind the teeth. However, they can be quite more expensive, which you need to account for.
How To Care For Teeth With Braces
When your child needs to have dental braces right away, their regular brushing routine might not be enough to promote proper hygiene. With the metal around their teeth, they need to ensure that each tooth is thoroughly clean, especially that their toothbrush might not reach every space.
Ideally, your child should continue to brush their teeth regularly twice a day with proper flossing. Additionally, they should also rinse their mouth after every meal with water to flush out any food particles that might get stuck between their braces. Your child should consider using an oral irrigator that could help them remove any plaque or food particles in their mouth. Lastly, it would be helpful if you could ask them to bring a mirror every time they need to head out to check their teeth and see if there are any food particles in between their braces.
Moreover, your child shouldn’t miss an orthodontist appointment, no matter how busy they could get. In most cases, you may need to bring your child for regular adjustment at least once a month. While every adjustment might be quite painful and lengthy, it’ll help to deliver the best results for your child’s teeth alignment. With regular check-ups, you can be on track with developing your child’s oral health, rather than delaying the progress.
Furthermore, if your child is experiencing any extreme pain for hours or days after their brace adjustment, you should communicate with their orthodontist immediately so they can provide them with appropriate treatment. They could loosen your braces and refer you back to your dentist and see if you have any existing oral concerns that they can treat.
Conclusion
When your child reaches the age of eight, you should focus on their oral health and see if they need dental braces right away. Early prevention is better than cure, especially if severe causes might require them to undergo surgery. While the entire process can be lengthy as it’ll take years before they could have perfectly aligned teeth, the results would be worth it as they could take it with them as they grow old.