Listen to Your Dentist When They Recommend Wisdom Teeth Extraction

If you are looking at your child's teeth and wondering if you should have them capped, crowned or extracted, you may be looking at the situation in a purely cosmetic sense. Far too many cosmetic and plastic surgery procedures are performed annually on minors, before their bodies and their bones have fully grown. This can lead to serious health conditions and consequences. Before you schedule an appointment with a cosmetic dentist, here are a couple of questions you can ask yourself to help you decide if the procedures you want for your child are truly necessary or if they are truly cosmetic. 

Will the Desired Procedures Help Your Child Speak, Chew and/or Eat Better?

Even though crowns, extractions and other cosmetic procedures are generally used to make one's smile better, they can also affect how a patient speaks, chews and eats. If the procedures you want your child to have will improve any problems he or she has with speaking, eating and/or chewing, it is not really a cosmetic procedure, but a necessary one. The fact that it will improve your child's smile and thus improve his or her overall appearance is just a side benefit to correcting other oral problems.

Do You Just Want to Give Your Child a Better Appearance?

Sometimes the unnecessary procedures parents pay for are more about improving how their children look rather than helping them with a physical problem. While that is understandable, it can send the wrong message to your children, placing an emphasis on their appearance rather than on their abilities and talents. (If the problem is more about bullying at school, there are laws that can (and should) protect your child against the verbal assaults, which you can pursue through the school system and then through court, if necessary.) It should also be noted that most elementary school children will lose most of their teeth and once adult teeth grow in, they will need braces to straighten these teeth anyway, thereby correcting most of the visual aesthetics of their mouths. 

Correcting, Fixing or Replacing Badly Damaged Permanent Teeth

While most pediatric dentists are leery of replacing or crowning baby teeth, if your child has experienced some damage to one or more permanent teeth, this is an emergency situation. It is no longer a cosmetic issue when an adult tooth is broken, cracked or knocked loose, nor is it a matter of personal appearance. It becomes necessary to correct, fix, crown or replace the damaged teeth with implants so that your child has all the teeth he or she will need until the end of his or her life.