Kid Friendly Dentist Indianapolis, IN
All you need to do is call 317 218 9901 to schedule an appointment. We will work within your schedule to ensure that you receive the care you need, when you need it.
As a kid friendly dentist in Indianapolis we treat young children, including preschooler and elementary age children, for their first checkup. We realize that a lot of parents do not bring their child to the dentist until they are much older. This, however, is a mistake. Your child can develop cavities as young as their toddler years and visiting our kid friendly dentist office, is one way to help prevent them.
What You Should Know
As a parent, you naturally want what is best for your child. Many parents are unaware of how oral health and dental care plays into that. According to the Center for Disease Control, tooth decay (cavities) is the number one most commonly occurring infectious disease among children. This leads to children experiencing toothaches in high numbers, missing days from school, and experiencing overall discomfort. Tooth decay is not a trivial thing, but a condition that can create significant discomfort for your child and even make it difficult for them to eat, speak clearly, and engage in normal daily activities.
If you live in the 46204 area and think that this will not happen to your child, statistically, it most likely will. Brushing and flossing at home will help, but it is not enough. You need to bring your child to our kid friendly dentist office twice a year so that we can examine and clean their teeth. By doing this, we will be able to remove the plaque and bacteria that can lead to cavities in the first place.
Get started!
Dr. So will start by examining your teeth and learning more about what goals you have for your smile
Options will then be presented, and you can decide the route you want to take. Most of the time, patients in the local area will use a combination of procedures in order to achieve the results they have in mind.
Resources You Can Use at Home
In addition to visiting our kid friendly dentist office, it is important that you practice good oral hygiene at home and teach your child to do the same. In our dental office, we work with a lot of children under age eight and understand how challenging it can be to get them excited about brushing teeth. Kids are busy and asking them to stop riding bikes, building Legos, or playing dress up to brush their teeth can lead to conflict fairly quickly. We get it. At Mass Ave Family Dentistry, we can work with young children and are under no illusion that they are fascinated by oral health.
Our job, however, is to change their opinion of dental care and show them that it can be fun and interesting. This way they will want to brush and floss their teeth, even without being told. With that in mind, we have a few resources that we have found to be helpful and suggest that you try them at home.
Check out what others are saying about our family dental services on Yelp: Kid Friendly Dentist Indianapolis.
How long they are brushing for
Once your child is brushing correctly, it is time to turn your attention to how long they are brushing for. At Mass Ave Family Dentistry we encourage all of our patients to brush for two minutes, twice a day, regardless of how old they are. This, however, can be difficult for young children that find it hard to focus on a task or to stay still. As a kid friendly dentist, we want them to brush their teeth but staying still isn’t a requirement. Try making it fun to brush teeth by playing their favorite song for two minutes and letting them dance and brush. You can also play a two-minute video clip or cartoon for them while brushing.
The American Dental Association has an entire section of their website devoted to these short videos and watching them will get your child used to brushing for the full two minutes. We have worked with families throughout the 46204 area and have found that using media works far better than standing there with a stopwatch. The goal is to create positive associations between dental care and having fun so that your child will continue to brush their teeth as they grow.
Prevention
As a kid friendly dentist office in Indianapolis, we are focused on preventative care. It is far better for your child to visit us for a regular teeth cleaning than to only see us with a toothache. Fortunately, by using preventative care methods we can help your child to avoid experiencing any dental discomfort. In addition to cleaning their teeth, one of the ways that we do so is with dental sealant. Many children have deep ridges in their teeth. When they bite down and chew food, bacteria, food particles, and plaque can become trapped in those ridges and eventually they will create tooth decay.
These areas are particularly difficult to clean with a toothbrush alone, so even the most fastidious of parents may find it challenging to keep cavities at bay. By using dental sealant, a protective layer is placed onto the teeth so that nothing can become stuck in these ridges. The procedure is painless and fast since all we need to do is brush a material onto the teeth and allow it to harden. At Mass Ave Family Dentistry, we have found this to be a simple way to prevent our young patients from getting cavities.