One of the joys in my retirement is that I am able to get more involved with my grand kids than I actually did with my own kids. It’s not that I was one of those guys who believed that a woman’s place is in the home where she can cook, clean and look after the kids. It was just that money was tight, my job paid more than the wife’s and we did not want to leave our kids with strangers – so she stayed home and looked after them. Which, kids being kids, involved taking them to the dentist whenever necessary. I was too tied up at work to remember how she performed that particular motherly task.
The Past
I do remember my first time as a 5 year old dental patient; who had somehow been cajoled and bullied into the dentist’s waiting room. My turn came and I entered a strange smelling room with a huge chair and weird looking equipment. I guessed the guy in the white coat was the dentist and he ordered me into the big chair which was very close to the weird equipment. He stuck some things in my mouth and poked around a bit. Then, he went to a glass fronted cabinet with the word “POISON” etched onto its door. I kicked out, struggled upright, leapt off the, now reclined, chair and bolted out the door as fast as I could. It took several days for me to be convinced that the cabinet was old and the sign on the door was now meaningless and what the dentist was trying to poison me was with nothing more than mouthwash! However, I have never been a big fan of dentists since.
The Present
Back in my day, we were only vaguely aware of the word “paediatric” but I certainly wish that my first dentist had been a pediatric dentist In Brecksville, OH and I am certainly going to find one for my grandkids first dental experience. At their age, there is unlikely to be anything dramatically wrong with their teeth (their parents impressed dental hygiene on them from an early age); so, they probably do not need state of the art procedures and fancy equipment for their first check up.
But, what I do want them to have is a dentist who understands the mind of a child undergoing a new and, possibly, frightening experience. Any pediatric dentist In Brecksville, OH will have undergone extra training; not only on problems associated with young teeth but also to obtain an understanding of a child’s emotional as well as physical development.
