Cape Town Smile Studios

Adults (parents, care givers, grandparents) are a child’s role model. If you frequently refer to dental treatment in a negative manner, the child will associate the dental visit as a negative experience

There are various ways that a child can learn dental phobia.

A. Children can be traumatized during an early dental visit. This can happen in a few ways:

1. physically restraining the uncooperative child. In the modern practice, should a child need to be physically restrained, no dental procedure will be done as physical restraints, even by the parents themselves, are not used and should not be used any more.

2. unsympathetic dentist of parent / care giver.

3. the first dental visit that is an emergency, i.e. due to broken teeth, pain or trauma to the teeth. The child is unfamiliar with the dental office, the dental staff and the dentist, as well as what is expected of him/her during a dental visit. Add to this the dental trauma that now needs treatment, and you have a recipe for an uncooperative child. If the emergency is an abscess the chances are good the tooth will not numb properly, which, if the procedure is continued, will cause pain which the child will remember into adulthood.

B. Adults (parents, care givers, grandparents) are a child’s role model. If you frequently refer to dental treatment in a negative manner, the child will associate the dental visit as a negative experience without anything negative that may have happened during his/her visit. He/she can actually refuse to go (even if he/she has not been there before) because of the fear of what might happen.

C. Where the dentist is used as the “boogey man” or the dental treatment used as negative reinforcement for actions (e.g. “If you eat all those sweets the dentist will have to pull your teeth/put fillings in your teeth/ etc”). Grandparents with false teeth have been known to remove the dentures and “bite” them up and down and scare the living daylights out of the poor kids! This is usually accompanied with threats e.g. “if you don’t brush your teeth the dentist will give you teeth like these!” In one such case the toddler began to wet his bed after he was told he was going to the dentist! In another case the boy refused to even enter the reception area, and was kicking and screaming all the way from the car to the office!