Early Treatment

Timing is extremely important in the orthodontic treatment of a child’s dental growth and development. The American Association of Orthodontists recommends that a child be seen at age 7 or earlier if there are indications of a problem. This is the age at which we’d like to first see your child.

The reason we’d like to examine your child at this young age is timing. Your child’s back baby teeth are actually larger than the permanent teeth that replace them, leaving what we call ‘leeway space’ in the mouth. By directing the movement of teeth and controlling the amount of crowding during this phase of your child’s growth, we can use this leeway space for the permanent teeth. This frequently means that extractions of teeth can be avoided in the future. Early intervention in orthodontic conditions has dramatically decreased the amount of extractions compared to earlier generations.

We can also take advantage of your child’s pre-pubertal growth spurt to direct the growth of jaws. This frequently means that any treatment required further in your child’s development would be less complex and taxing.

Lastly, our treatment philosophy is that we want to give you or your child a beautiful, healthy smile for life. There are characteristics of a youthful smile and an older smile, and we direct treatment toward prolonging the youthfulness of your or your child’s smile for as long as possible.