Question:
I'm a Psychology graduate student and mother of three. For my thesis,
I decided to write a children's book about going to the dentist for
the first time. However, the more I learn the more I realize that I
should write a page strictly for parents. It seems to me that parents,
myself included, can be guilty of inadvertently creating needless
worry in their children.
I would welcome any feedback as to what I should examine as part of
this research, or the sharing of any experiences which you feel I
could learn from.
Answer:
Start by examining all the parent who THREATEN their kids by saying
they are going to take him/her to the dentist if they do not behave
If you don't have a good pediatric dental text, get one (we used
Sidney Finn--"Clinical Pedodontics" --Saunders) to see how handling
children is taught in dental school.
Your general feeling is right--in trying to shield their children from
anxiety and fear, many instill fear in their children before they ever get
to the dentist.
One of the things we are taught is using the presence or absence of
the parent in the treatment room to aid in control. Often the parent
doesn't realize this or approve, and some discussion before the
appointment is useful as to exactly what is going to go on. I find that
when the parent does not comply with the requests of the dentist or
disagrees in the presence of the child I have just about zero chance of
getting the child to cooperate.
I agree completely. I wish God created mute parents. If they would just watch
and not talk, the dentist and the patient would do much better.
Having been the parent of a small child, I agree!
One of the hardest things a parent can do is step aside, perhaps that
is why it is so memorable when you finally do.
Neither I nor my wife have the slightest idea how to roller-skate, so
you can imagine how productive it was when we tried to teach our 6 year-old
daughter. Finally we stumbled on a method; we took her to a skating rink on
a Saturday morning, outfitted her with skates, kissed her, and left! Damn
it was hard! We returned three hours later to find our daughter happily
making her way around the rink, pretty much indistinguishable from the rest
of the young patrons. Don't know what happened while we were gone, but I am
convinced it never would have happened if we had stayed.
