Early Dental Care
Good habits start early.
Dental caries is the most common childhood disease, even more common than asthma. It is caused by a bacteria that are transmitted to children at an early age. For that reason, we would like to see children around the age of 18 months, to establish a dental home and to begin preventive measures. We are also happy to see younger children earlier, when dental concerns arise.
tongue and lip-tie release
A helping hand for you and your new addition.
Tongue-ties, lip-ties, and cheek-ties can sometimes get in the way of developing a healthy breastfeeding relationship with your new baby. Ties can also lead to later troubles with other functions of the mouth such as speech difficulties, eating problems, painful mouth joint (TMJ), sore muscles of chewing, and many dental cavities. We specialize in diagnosing and correcting oral ties to improve the life of babies and older kids too.
During our in-depth consultations, we review your and your child’s symptoms and do a thorough examination. Our thoughtful approach helps us correctly diagnose and treat ties. Our many years’ experience with feeding difficulties leads to understanding and compassion.
meaning …
During my children’s babyhood, I logged in over 7 years of breast feeding and it was a road filled with joy and filled with difficulties. I never found anything as effective as breast milk at soothing a fussy child. Breast milk was easily available, always the right temperature, and perfectly fresh. The difficulties I experienced were damaged and painful nipples, plugged ducts, engorgement, a few bouts of mastitis (once with sepsis), sadness and no access to help. With the experience of these difficulties, it is my pleasure and my mission to help babies and families with feeding issues. It brings meaning to my practice of dentistry and to my life.
Dr. Linda Morgan
Cosmetic Dentistry
bringing out your best smile.
Your children can benefit from cosmetic dentistry, especially if a front tooth has been fractured, a tooth is misshapen, when space closure is desired, and when teeth have discolorations or darkness. With dental expertise and an artistic eye, every tooth is treated with the upmost care to ensure quality esthetic restorations.
Tooth blemishes can be treated with a minimally invasive technique, ICON infiltration. This can remove discolored spots from most teeth. Dark teeth can be treated with in-office whitening. And, fractured or misshapen teeth are transformed with correctly matched resin material.
Tooth whitening
A beautiful, sparkly smile is a wonderful way to boost confidence.
Here at Village Pediatric Dental, we use Zoom Whitening by Sonicare. We begin with a consultation to ensure quality care will be given. The following whitening appointment is 90 minutes and results in instant white teeth that lasts many years.
Sealants
Your child’s permanent molars are especially vulnerable to tooth decay due to pits and grooves on the biting surfaces of these teeth. These areas allow food to stick to the tooth and make it difficult to clean. A sealant is a clear resin material that is placed in the deep pits and grooves, creating a smooth surface that is more easily cleaned and less at risk for developing pit and fissure cavities.
Crowns and Fillings
sometimes our teeth need a little help.
At Village Pediatric Dental we prefer to use directly-bonded, tooth-colored resin fillings whenever possible. The bond between the tooth and filling helps to prevent recurrent cavities and is also esthetically pleasing. If a cavity is large or a tooth is fractured, a crown may be necessary. The dental materials we use are the highest quality available, keeping our fillings and crowns flawless for many years.
Continuing Care
keep those smiles bright and healthy.
Regular dental visits are important for children. Here are a few reasons why:
Prevention: Children’s dietary habits change as they become independent and develop preferences. Diet is a key player in the development of cavities. At each visit, we discuss your child’s diet and try to give helpful suggestions to assist in preventing dental caries. Hygiene habits are hard to develop and maintain, so we monitor plaque levels and give support to help develop good oral hygiene skills.
Early Diagnosis: When dental decay is caught early, we are sometimes able to put a plan in place to try to reverse these cavities or to keep them small until your child is more ready for a filling. If fillings are needed, a small filling is a lot easier for your child to receive than a large one.
Trust: Cleanings are also excellent opportunities to earn trust and to develop positive dental experiences. If your child should ever need more treatment than a dental cleaning, those easier visit experiences will give them that trust and comfort.
X-Rays
Dental x-rays are used to detect dental decay, how large it is, and its location. It informs our decision making about the treatment of each tooth. Although the exposure to radiation from dental x-rays is extremely low, we are sensitive to minimizing it so that the frequency of x-rays is carefully based on your child’s needs.
Dental x-rays are also used to detect abnormalities in the bones and teeth and to monitor growth and development.
We take all our x-rays digitally. This has many benefits. The results are immediate and the amount of radiation exposure for each patient is significantly reduced. And, digital is environmentally friendly.
Using a hand-held x-ray device, the Nomad, has so little radiation, it allows us to stay with your child. This reduces the number of retakes and allows us to break up difficult x-rays into smaller ones.
Sports Dentistry
Protecting that smile on and off the field.
About 26% of dental injuries occur while playing sports. Nearly 80 percent of all dental injuries affect at least one of the front teeth. There are millions of mouth and facial sporting injuries each year. Mouth guards massively reduce the injury rates.
At Village Pediatric Dental we custom make our laminated mouth guards in-house to provide a completely custom and comfortable way for your athlete to protect their teeth.
Ortho & Space Maintainers
Make some room, there's teeth incoming.
Since primary teeth guide the permanent teeth into place, children who prematurely lose teeth may require a space maintainer, a device used to hold the natural space open. Without this appliance, the teeth can tilt and drift into the empty space, causing the permanent teeth to come in crooked or their path into the mouth blocked.
We monitor growth and development and when orthodontic problems arise, we guide you toward the optimum time to pursue an orthodontic consultation.
For Parents
Some children benefit from a parent's presence in the treatment area, and some other children do better for their dental care without parental presence. It is important to remember that your child needs to develop a relationship with his or her dentist and so the best role for the parent most of the time is to be an observer. If siblings come along, it is easier if they can play in the reception area.
Dental Emergencies
We can be easily reached for emergencies; please call the office at 978-263-2226.
Examples of emergencies are trauma, tooth pain, infection, and some mouth sores.
