When should a child first see a dentist?

By the first birthday, or within six months of the first tooth appearing — whichever comes first. In practice most children in Mira Road are brought at five or six, and almost always because something already hurts.

That timing is the problem. A child whose first experience of a dentist is an injection while in pain learns that dentists mean pain. A child who came at one, sat in the chair, counted their teeth and left with a sticker learns something else entirely.

What actually happens at a first visit

Nothing invasive, unless something hurts. We show the child the chair, the mirror and the light before using any of them. Toddlers are examined knee-to-knee, sitting in your lap facing you, with their head in mine. It takes twenty minutes and most of it is conversation.

"They fall out anyway" — why milk teeth still need treating

This is the most common thing we hear, and it is wrong for three specific reasons.

1. Milk teeth hold the space for the permanent teeth. Lose one early and the neighbours drift into the gap, so the adult tooth has nowhere to erupt. That is a large share of the crowding we later treat with braces.
2. Infection in a milk tooth sits directly above the developing adult tooth and can damage its enamel permanently before it ever appears.
3. The last milk teeth are not lost until around age twelve. A tooth that hurts at six has six years left to serve.

What causes cavities in small children here

If your child is already frightened

Book an appointment where nothing is done. We schedule extra time, the child sits in the chair, looks at the instruments and leaves. It costs one appointment and it changes the next ten years.

One request: never use the dentist as a threat. "Behave or the doctor will give you an injection" undoes everything we do in the chair.