Planning for Your First Family Dentist Visit

Visiting the family dentist may not be the most fun trip in the world, but it is one that helps families keep up their oral hygiene and great teeth together. There are numerous advantages to having a family dentist, someone who sees everyone in the family, from Grandma to the newest born child. The most important thing from our perspective is the sense of trust we can build up over time, which is a privilege granted by families to very few service providers, sometimes only their family physician.

Building trust with patients

Think about it from a child’s perspective. The dentist office can be a scary place for many children, with strange tools, people in white lab coats, and all the unnamed fears that go with visiting a medical provider in the first place. However, a child quickly learns there is nothing to fear as they see us interacting with the parent.

Children learn by watching, so as they watch us perform regular maintenance work on teeth, like cleaning and a bi-annual examination, they learn there is nothing to fear. Things like X-rays become more interesting with observation and learning. Ironically, having the same family dentist for both parents and their children also helps to build up parent’s confidence and diminish any sense of anxiety about the parent’s own teeth that they might have when visiting the dentist.

After all, the family dentist who treats the child is someone parents want to innately trust. As we get treat older patients, we hope this trust has manifested itself to the point where the parents can come to us for advice and ways to replace teeth as they are lost to age or disease. In essence, having a family dentist creates a lifetime of healthy opportunities.

Advantages to having a family dentist

Having a family dentist can also have significant other advantages. For example, and this is one of our favorites, families can receive all necessary treatment in one location. This ability saves families the trouble of having to travel from one place to another seeking various treatment options. From cleaning and examinations to X-rays, fillings, and other regular dentistry, we do it all right here at the clinic.

As children grow, their needs are going to constantly change, so having a provider who does it all for adults and children means the family will never have to change dentists to get those services. With more insurance plans having things like flexible spending accounts, there is a need for the dentist to be able to maximize the usage of the dental plans.

When you are at Gentle Family Dentistry: Mark D Jones DMD, a family dentist office, we can do this for the entire family so you are not having to keep track of who is getting what or how much it will end up costing you. Finally, scheduling becomes so much easier when you have one dentist office to bring the entire family to.