Family Dentistry

There is not really a person who would not benefit from being at a family dental practice. We love to see everyone in the family. Moms, dads, grandpas, grandma, the kids.Having a dental home is very important. It means that you are seeing the same people every time you come in. These are people who know you, they know your story, they know what's going on in your life, and they're better able to care for you because of that.

I love to see kids as early as possible. Recommendations from the ADA are six months after the first tooth comes in or one year of age, whichever comes first. But the idea is that the younger we start acclimating children to the dental office, the earlier we're able to start educating parents about what to look out for, what to avoid, the healthier the child's going to be.

When you're looking for a dental home for your family, I think that you need to have an office where you have people who want to help you, who are excited to have you come in. Love to have your kids in the chair and love to tell them no cavities. At the same time, are able to comprehensively treat adults and then also older generations.

If you don't have all of that, then you're not in the right place. I love working with children and sometimes I think that the parents are more nervous than the kids are. What I like to talk about with parents is talking to their kids ahead of time, letting them know what to expect.

We avoid all scary words. We don't say shot. We don't say needle.

We don't say any of that. We don't see drill. There are plenty of great YouTube videos that make the dentists seem more approachable, more friendly, not such a scary place.Also, we offer things like nitrous sedation, which laughing gas is how it's colloquially known. If the child really is that nervous and have some special injection techniques that really help kids out. I think having consistency across the board and what our patients, whole family can expect comes a lot from experience of the dental practitioners from myself and Dr. Shoemate to the hygienist, to our assistants and certainly the front desk.

We all want our patients to feel special and cared for. And I think that we're able to do that by making dentistry fun for the kids and answering questions for the adults. For children and teenagers, preventative care is especially important.

I want to make sure I'm not only educating the kids, but also educating the parents. And we use things like sealants. We use fluoride varnishes, especially for kids who are at a higher risk for cavities or kids who are in braces.

We have a prescription fluoride toothpaste that we use, but it's also most importantly about helping them understand and feel empowered in their own oral health care. So teaching them how to brush, showing them how to floss, talking about ways that they can incorporate it and make it easier for them. When you have the consistency of seeing the same people, they can tell if something's changed.

You know, if an older patient or any patient starts a new medication and they come in and we see dry mouth starting, or we see that, you know, a kid is trending towards getting cavities, we're able to say, hey, this was different before. Now we've got to figure out what's changed so we can hopefully change it back. And if we can't, you know, what are our strategies that we're going to employ going forward to keep you healthy? As an office, we see a lot of adults who have had pretty traumatic dental experiences in their lives.

My goal is that when a kid comes in, they know that I'm there for them. I want to help them, want to hear them, and I want to make it fun, make it a good experience. You know, this is how we can do better.

This is what you're doing great. And I think when you can connect with a kid on their level, they look at the dentist, like I did growing up, as a great experience. Oh, I get to see my hygienist Lindsay again.

I love seeing Lindsay, or I get to see Dr. Lauren. It makes such a difference for kids with their oral health long-term to know that they started out in a good place, in a place that set them up for success. Preventative dentistry is the best thing that anyone can do for not only their oral health long-term, but also for their bank account.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is not unrealistic. When we're looking at patients who go years and years without dental care, the cost to those patients is so much greater, not only financially, but also psychologically. So if you're coming in every six months, and say you have an issue, and we're able to get to it early, it's much less burdening to the patient, to the family, than years without care.

Because I love working with kids so much, I get a lot of feedback from parents about their experience. And this is actually an area that makes me really happy, and makes my day when I get high fives from kids, or hugs, or say I give an injection, and the patient doesn't even know, and the parents are looking at me like, what? Just hearing afterwards from the parents about how their kid was scared, or they were scared, and how the appointment went better than they ever could have imagined, that is really fulfilling to me. Early childhood caries, which is just a fancy term for cavities in young kids, is the number one disease amongst kids in the country.

That can lead to missed school, it can lead to sicknesses, it can lead to pain that's distracting for kids. You know, when you're looking at preventative care, and saying, hey, can we keep these kids healthier? I think it's really important long-term. When you have a kid who's not distracted at school because they're too smart for it, and you have a kid who has sleep disorder breathing, and it hasn't been noticed, let alone addressed, you're going to notice better behavior, you're going to notice better performance in school, your kid's going to have more energy.

So I think overall, the benefits are huge.