Have you been looking at your child’s teeth and thinking, ‘Uh oh, I think we’re going to need braces here’? If you have, or if you and your partner both needed braces as kids and you think your child will too, then the best thing to do is bring them into Weybridge Orthodontics for a check-up.
Orthodontics in Weybridge will have moved on considerably since you were a child. For one thing, we can treat children earlier now.
The early check-up for orthodontics in Weybridge
Because we now have digital x-rays and scans, we can see into the jawbone much more easily. This means we can take a look at your child’s adult teeth while they are still waiting behind their baby teeth to come through.
For this reason, we recommend that you bring your child in for a check-up at around the age of 7. Don’t worry if your child is already older than 7, we can still take a look and work out a treatment plan if necessary.
We tend to start treating children between the ages of 9-14, when most, or all, of their adult teeth have come through. Sometimes we do what we call interceptive treatment, which means that we start treating while some of the teeth are still on their way through.
Why have early treatment?
Sometimes it can be a good idea to have orthodontics in Weybridge at an early age if we need to correct a problem that is developing because of habits such as thumb or finger sucking. We also carry out treatment early if we think we will need to guide the growth of the jawbone so that it will be able to accommodate all the teeth. We often undertake early treatment to prevent the need for drastic, invasive interventions later on.
This may mean that your child will need a second treatment with orthodontics in Weybridge to correct the alignment of their teeth with braces. But this treatment is often much shorter in length.
Starting treatment earlier can also mean finishing earlier, perhaps before the dreaded years of self-conscious adolescence really get a grip, making your child’s experience of being a teenager easier and maybe yours too.