A childs development and their life experiences all come into play in order to better understand and give the explanation why children react differently to dental treatment. The parents influence is in the fact where in bringing up and growing of their offspring the children learn from and imitate their parents (and also their confrontation patterns and coping skills with stressful situations, including rationalization and relaxation). Dental anxiety is the single most important predictor of childrens behavior in the dental setting and that there are strong associations between dental anxiety and perceived un-cooperative and problem behaviors. The involvement of the childs parents should also be a key consideration. Parents can learn about helpful and unhelpful approaches for managing their childs anxious symptoms and behaviors. Strategies can be used to enhance trust, increase feelings of control and develop coping skills in children with dental anxiety. It is clearly imperative that the dental team identifies and works with children who exhibit signs of dental anxiety fr
om an early stage.
The first thing I want to elaborate on is on understanding childrenΒs dental anxiety. Common anxieties among kids include fearing the mysterious and being worried regarding a lack of manage-both of which can happen with dental assessment and treatment. Dental fear represents a normal emotional reaction to a specific threatening external dental stimuli, dental anxiety represents a general state in which the individual experiences a level of apprehension and is prepared for something negative to happen and dental phobia is a severe type of dental anxiety that may result in avoidance or endurance of the dental experience with major discomfort. Of course dental fear can come from past experiences too. For example, the dentist runs a prophylaxis brush over a 8-year-olds teeth and he has gingivitis, so it bleeds. As the dentist accidentally clips the gum it may be uncomfortable. The child says, That hurts. To which the dentist (and sometimes the mother) reply, Oh, no it doesnt. It cant. Its just an electric toothbrush. For some children, this can be traumatic.