The thought of taking a child with special needs to the dentist can be just as scary for the parent as it is for the child!
Sensory overload, interacting with strangers who don’t know your child, and dealing with difficult behavior in public are just a few of the concerns that make the notion so overwhelming.
As with every new experience, the key is preparation. We’ve compiled a bunch practical tips and ideas for you to help your child navigate an upcoming dentist visit.
Picking the right dentist
Not all dentists are created equal. A dentist who is excellent with your other children might not be the right fit for your child with special needs. It’s important to ask around before taking a child with special needs to the dentist. Some dentists will be open to having an introductory appointment in which the child just schmoozes with the dentist and gets to look at and touch the dentist chair and tools, without doing any actual work until next time. After getting comfortable with the dentist, it’s usually a whole lot easier for the child to cooperate.
Call Ezreinu at 718-750-1010 for a dentist referral.
New Sensory Experiences
Some children feel uncomfortable when others touch them. For such a child, a dentist who sticks fingers inside of his mouth can feel particularly invasive. Talk about it before the dentist visit, and practice by putting on a pair of latex gloves and gently moving your fingers around inside your child’s mouth. You can even give a pair of gloves to your child, and give him a turn to be the “dentist”, sticking his fingers into your mouth! Doing this activity will normalize the experience for your child.
The up-and-down motion of the dentist chair is fun for some kids, but unsettling for others. You can prepare at home by practicing with a thin mattress or yoga mat. Have your child lay down flat on the mat, and slowly (and safely!) lift the edge behind your child’s head, gently maneuvering to a more upright position, and then bringing it slowly back down. You can also ask the dentist to recline the chair to the right position before your child gets up onto it. Smaller children can be held on a parent’s lap while being treated.
The cold metal of the bib clip can be an uncomfortable experience. You can bring along your own fabric bib from home, or purchase some silicone bib clips online before your dentist visit. Silicone is a more comfortable material against bare skin. Tip: If your child won’t wear a bib, bring along an extra shirt to change your child into afterwards.
Many children find the glare of the bright light over the dentist chair to be disturbing. The tried and true solution is laughably simple: sunglasses! Grab a pair before leaving to the dentist, or better yet, make it into an activity! Go on a trip together to the 99-cents store and allow your child to pick out her own pair of sunglasses to wear at the dentist.
Even a typically developing child finds the dentist’s tools frightening and uncomfortable. While there’s no good way (short of anesthesia) to get out of experiencing the dentist’s tools, the more a child is exposed to them in advance, the more natural it will feel to him. Purchase one of the adorable dentist sets of toy tools below for your child to play with at home. Encourage interactive role play with your child, giving a name to each tool and taking turns playing “dentist” and “patient”. When you get to the dentist, have the dentist show each tool to the child before using so that there are no unpleasant surprises. And of course, promise your child (and yourself!) a worthy reward for cooperation.
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Social Story
Social stories are a great way to prepare children for a new experience. In I go to the Dentist, adorable book from the popular Toddler Experience Series by Rikki Benenfeld, your child will learn what to expect at their upcoming dentist visit.
In the worst case…
Some children are just not a shidduch with the dentist, no matter how patient, kind, and experienced the dentist may be.
If your child needs significant dental work done and you’ve tried every trick in the book to no avail, then it may be time to consider sedation dentistry.
There are a handful of dental clinics which have anesthesiologists on staff, and a number of hospitals which provide dental work under sedation, though it might take a while to secure an appointment due to the long wait lists.
If you’ve tried it all and it’s just not going, sometimes sedation is the answer!
Call Ezreinu at 718-750-1010 for a sedation dentistry referral.
D-I-Y
The dentist cleans our teeth with special tools so that they can be healthy and strong!
Print out this mouth template, slide it into a plastic sheet protector, and let your child color on the teeth with Expo markers, using a toothbrush to “clean away the dirt”. It takes 30 seconds of your time to throw together and keeps your child occupied for a nice while – at the same time as learning about oral hygiene! That’s one easy way to feel like a good mother:)
Yaakov is a cute little boy who was recently diagnosed with a condition which requires specific medical equipment for management. Ezreinu guided Yaakov’s family to an organization which could provide guidance for his condition in general as well as a well-equipped gemach for the needed equipment until insurance kicked in. ⬛
Leah’la, a spunky 11-year-old girl with a learning disability, was falling behind in her mainstream classroom. She was dead-set against joining the small special ed group in her school, but her limudei kodesh teacher insisted that she needed a tutor in order to keep up with her class. Paying a private tutor was one expense too many for Leah’s strapped family, and her parents were at a loss. Ezreinu put them in contact with an organization which would fund a tutor for Leah’la, enabling her to thrive academically without compromising on her self-confidence. ⬛
Identifying details have been changed to protect client confidentiality.