4 Benefits of Children’s Orthodontics
Straightening your child’s teeth can have lifelong benefits
If your child has crooked teeth, you really should consider orthodontic treatment. Straightening teeth and correcting overbites and underbites has many important benefits, and one day your children will thank you for your investment in their futures.
Prevent Damage to Buck Teeth
Buck teeth are prone to damage throughout a person’s life, but childhood tends to be hardest on them. Kids love to be active and adventurous, and often this gets them into trouble. When a child with buck teeth suffers a fall or a blow to the mouth while playing sports, the teeth may chip or even break in half. This happens because the buck teeth don’t line up properly with the lower teeth behind them. In fact, any misaligned teeth can be vulnerable to damage. By correcting your child’s tooth alignment with orthodontics, you can greatly reduce the risk of accidental damage to their teeth.
Improve Ability to Clean Teeth
Crooked teeth create lots of awkward nooks and crannies for food, plaque bacteria, and tartar to build up. This in turn leads to increased risk of cavities as bacteria feast on trapped food and secrete acids that erode tooth enamel. By investing in orthodontics for your child, you can make their teeth easier to clean and reduce their risk of tooth decay and gum disease. Considering that tooth decay and gum disease are the leading cause of tooth loss in adults, it’s quite clear you will be doing your child a lifelong service by helping them to eliminate the crooked or overlapping teeth that contribute to these conditions.
Prevent Bullying
Sometimes it seems like kids are experts in cruelty. Kids with crooked teeth, gapped teeth, misshapen teeth, or teeth that are of radically different sizes can be easy targets for bullies. With new orthodontic technologies such as Invisalign, which allow teeth to be straightened with clear plastic trays instead of metal braces, you don’t have to worry about orthodontic treatment making the bullying worse. Invisalign is so subtle that no one else will even know your child is receiving treatment.
Promote Self-Confidence
One final benefit of orthodontic treatment is that it allows people of all ages to feel more confident about their smiles. By eliminating the crooked teeth that have caused embarrassment or self-consciousness, we can help kids let go of these issues and feel more confident in their appearance and in the smiles. Again, this is a benefit that can last a lifetime and affect your child’s future relationships and career.
