Dental Procedure Question :)

arabian said:
I hear ya ^ - my kid was hysterical. In future appointments I requested the "screamer time" at the end of the day. Soon he chilled about the whole thing.

I've often postulated about people who have an intense fear of cats. When you ask them if their mother also had the same fear, more often than not I am told that yes their mother had the same fear. I wonder if adult's fear and trepidation of dentists gets transposed to the children? I recall hearing horror stories about getting one's wisdom teeth removed when I was a teenager. When my time came for this most unpleasant experience I was surprised that it really wasn't as bad as I expected it to be.

Nowadays GA is given frequently and dentists have built lucrative practices on the fear of patients. Too bad they don't lower the cost and give stressed out parents a break.

Each to their own - as I said before, these are good parents who take their kids to the dentist. Praise the Lord for that!
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No fear projection here. Ex and I were quite comfortable with the dentist.
 
We've done both ways. At 5 we did local freezing and tooth extracted. I won't be popular but they will live. Many risks with GA that I do not want to take.
 
Young children look to their parents for how to react in certain situations. If either mom or dad turn on the drama, kidlet will follow suit. Keep reminding the child of how the dentist wants to make the BOO BOO stop by pulling out the bad tooth. A good dentist will make the procedure painless ... GA for one little tooth is not worth the health risks. Bribery usually works - "if you behave at the dentist today, I promise to take you to ....or buy you a ...."

You do what you have to do to get it done with the least amount of fussing lol!
 
Janibel said:
Young children look to their parents for how to react in certain situations. If either mom or dad turn on the drama, kidlet will follow suit. Keep reminding the child of how the dentist wants to make the BOO BOO stop by pulling out the bad tooth. A good dentist will make the procedure painless ... GA for one little tooth is not worth the health risks. Bribery usually works - "if you behave at the dentist today, I promise to take you to ....or buy you a ...."

You do what you have to do to get it done with the least amount of fussing lol!
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It is so funny to watch all of this well intentioned advice.

Did all of those things with my daughter, and my ex and I were 100% o the same page, and didn't transfer any anxiety, fears,etc., and she still completely freaked out and screamed and writhed, and basically scared the shut out of half the office.

Some kids/people can handle it, some can't. The people who haven't experienced the joys of attempting to deal with a truky hysterical child in a dentist chair will naively share all of their nifty strategies that happened to work for them, and that's fine, it really is. It just isn't realistic. They have GA available for a reason, and it's okay to use it.
 
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Your fear is court not best interest of the child? But you have best interest of the child in mind so why fear court? He cant do absolutelly nothing. But IMO GA is not needed because the s5 can be tricked and convinced and pain from needle before anasthasia kicks in is only a couple of minutes. IF that happened to fail, then have a letter from dentist and your ex WILL repay half plus motion costs.
 
The Iceberg said:
But IMO GA is not needed because the s5 can be tricked and convinced and pain from needle before anasthasia kicks in is only a couple of minutes. .
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That is quite logical, if the sensation of pain is what makes a kid hysterical. But it is the understanding of the procedure, powerlessness, and the anxiety surrounding it that causes most of the hysteria. Silly gas (nitrous oxide) might take care of that, but maybe not...
 
I feel for the parents in this situation particularly if all future dental procedures will be with GA. It could be extremely expensive for them to maintain regular preventative dental in the future. I have heard that some find dental cleaning to be much more painful than fillings. Orthodontic (braces) can be unpleasant as well and requires a monthly adjustment.
 
Helpless said:
...The next day, ex called stating that his dentist had done the filling procedure and that everything had gone well in regards to our son...

...It took my spouse and I an hour to try and convince S5 to go back, S5 was volatile, terrified, and in the end my spouse had to basket hold him, buckle him up in the vehicle, so that we could make the appointment in...
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I'm confused by this.
So, the first dentist visit was fine and went well (or is the other parent lying?)
But the 2nd attempt to go to dentist, was apparently a nightmare, trying to get the kid to go?

It doesn't seem like this situation was handled well, if you don't want your kid to be anxious, to go to the dentist, now, or in future.
ex.
"my spouse had to basket hold him". ?

Yikes.
 
Or maybe it's not the difference in dentists, as much as a difference in the procedures?

My daughter has had all kinds of dental work done, and although she didn't like it, she made it through.

With the extraction, something didn't add up. She insisted, through dreadful screams, that she could still feel the pain of the tooth being pulled, despite having had the local freezing inserted via a needle.

It took myself AND my ex holding her down to get the tooth out. The dentist admitted that the freezing isn't always enough for some patients, and recommended GA.

This sounds pretty similar to me.

There was no "tricking" my daughter. We tried to convince her that the pain was just in her head, and being caused by her fear, (as has been suggested by other folks on this thread) but her pain receptors apparently didn't agree. Even if it really was in our daughter's head, my ex and I decided that avoiding traumatizing our kid was more important than our egos and self satisfaction in making her go through something that made her feel terrible.

Why do people find it so hard to believe that this might be the case for the OP's kid? Why try to explain away her parental instinct on this?

This should be such an open and shut matter. She's deciding, to pay the extra costs of GA, and the father, who isn't even paying for it, is only objecting because, when he was that age, he didn't need that kind of "sissy" stuff. Because, surely, his son is exactly the same person he is. Yeah, never seen that end in disaster before. Not too hard to figure out who is sitting on the right side of the fence on this one.
 
Straittohell said:
It is so funny to watch all of this well intentioned advice.

Did all of those things with my daughter, and my ex and I were 100% o the..
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Maybe you thought you were both comfortable, with the dentist, and not "projecting", but then maybe your child also took queues from having both parents there, in the room, comforting her. That could also trigger a kid to think "oh oh...why are they both here, comforting me?".

I find, what worked well, is for me to go in for appointment first, with the kids watching the dentist do a check-up on me and then the dentist can follow-up with them. Of course, this only works, if the parent(s), aren't afraid of the dentist as well....and if the dentist is agreeable to it (most are).
 
dad2bandm said:
Maybe you thought you were both comfortable, with the dentist, and not "projecting", but then maybe your child also took queues from having both parents there, in the room, comforting her. That could also trigger a kid to think "oh oh...why are they both here, comforting me?".

I find, what worked well, is for me to go in for appointment first, with the kids watching the dentist do a check-up on me and then the dentist can follow-up with them. Of course, this only works, if the parent(s), aren't afraid of the dentist as well....and if the dentist is agreeable to it (most are).
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She asked for both of us to be in the room because she was nervous (again, she's always been nervous about the dentist, but normally is happy with one or both parents present), and we told her yes. She was happy about it. She was doing great, right up until the dentist started to pull the tooth, and then she suddenly began screaming and thrashing in the chair.

The dentist admitted that for some, the freezing doesn't work as well. She recommended GA, even though it meant going to another dentist in another city, and her losing the opportunity to make money off of us for the last two teeth that had to be pulled.

Read this blog from an actual dentist, and the comments from various people underneath, to get an idea of the scope of the problem.

Why Your Dentist Can’t Get You Numb | Oral Answers

Note that there are many different factors that can limit the ability to properly freeze a tooth. Anxiety is listed as one of them, but there are plenty of medically related causes as well.

I get that people are meaning well by trying to tell this OP that she simply needs to do a better job of assuaging her son's concerns, but it isn't always that simple.
 
just for a heads up on the freezing..there has been a few times when the freezing never took properly. All I had to do was put up my hand, the dentist stopped and put some more freezing in.
 
The Iceberg said:
Just asking, hair color is thread hijacking so i just wondered about your weight, no harm meant.
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it wasn't thread hijacking..redheads are known to have issues with dental procedures because freezing isn't as effective on some. If the child is a redhead then maybe that is an issue also.

You hijacked the thread by asking a personal question about my weight, which has nothing to do with getting freezing in the mouth for a dental procedure.

Study: Redheads' extra pain may cause fear of dentists - CNN.com
 
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