“Your child has a cavity.”
Not many parents want to hear those words, especially if their child has dental anxiety.
Last summer, I saw a three year old child who needed to have a filling on one of his upper molars.
The only reason he sat still in the chair long enough for us to remove the decay and get a filling put in was because we told him we were going to give him a yellow colored filling.
He loved tractors, and wanted it to be yellow like his toy tractor. When he was all done, we took a picture of it and gave it to him so he could show his friends and family.
I’ve found that giving children a colored filling (along with some other things we do to make the comfortable), helps them to sit in the dental chair and get their mentalhealthupdate.com needed dental work completed.
Find out why baby teeth need to have fillings if they just fall out.
Colored Fillings
Colored fillings are made of the same composite materials as tooth-colored fillings, they simply have more exciting coloring added to them.
At our office, we have five colors to choose from: blue, green, yellow, orange, and pink.
To the right, you can see how the pink filling looks on a tooth – it’s what most of the girls end up choosing. That filling, as well as the green one above, was placed to fill in a cavity that formed between the teeth, which is one of the more common places you can get a cavity.
While we can do a colored filling to repair most cavities in baby teeth, nobody has had us do one on a front tooth yet!
Using colored fillings is a nice idea. Children do love colors and somehow eliminates the fear of sitting on the chair. Thanks for this nice post!
Doug Horstman
President, Encompasse Tours
FACES Ski
“Come to the 26th Annual FACES Conference, for Dental CME”
Colored restorations for children is a nice way to make them feel good about restorations and can say it is a dental tattoo, on the other hand in adults it dosent sound to be very popular.
Great Information.. Thanks for Tom…..
Thank you so much Dr Tom! The info u provided was a life-saver for me…. my almost 7yo has shark teeth and I freaked out untili read ur info. Thanks for relieving my anxiety!
Hi, where did you purchase the colored composite??
Thanks!
Hi RN – Most recently I got it through Patterson. Here is the product info page: Twinky Star light cured compomer filling material.
I use these –> http://www.dentallifesciences.com/catalogue/rxcolourflow
There’s a downside to this – as much as the colours help children who are anxious about restoration, they are also pretty and can easily become a status symbol among kindergarteners and primary school children. A dentist’s assistant I spoke to said that glittery “princess teeth” are the goal of many small girls, and there seem to be parents who think this is cute and encourage their daughters to get them. How? By not brushing.
At my son’s kindergarten, two boys (brothers) had a full set of gold teeth in front. My son doesn’t want the boring natural teeth, but the glittery ones or the gold ones. He knows that to get artificial teeth he needs cavities, so he refuses to brush.
I can’t see the end to this battle yet, and I almost wish for the bad old days when a trip to the dentist gave you nightmares… at least we brushed out of fear.
Lola’s comment made me giggle ! And I completely agree with her, although to be honest if it came to that with my children I’d play hard ball and either say no sweets or anything like soda pop until they went back to religiously brushing their teeth. (If that didn’t work, I’d stop giving them pocket/chore money, since if they can’t be bothered to brush their teeth, how can I expect them to be any use drying dishes ?). 😛
As an adult, I’d be interested in getting coloured filling. At the end of the day, we live in a society that puts so much pressure on our aesthetics that it really isn’t too wild to imagine the next generation’s teeth being full of rainbows.
No one thinks to withdraw the colored filling perk if they neglect their brushing in order to get colored fillings? That is the only* consequence in my mind should neglect be due to wanting them. I’m not a dentist, I’m an artist and a mom, though. I can’t imagine colored fillings anyway when it comes to hues that resemble stuck food. It could cause stuck food to become all the rage in this crazy day and age. Better, offer a tooth ‘enhancement’ or irridescent veneer that doesn’t damage the enamal as a motivation to keep their teeth in good shape. Their heart health will thank them as well. But anything that looks like the remnants of a garden pea, pepperoni, an eggplant, beet or blood blister, or a yellow pepper…umm?! Who seeded these ideas for dental work? From my perspective, they weren’t finished thinking this through. At least add irridescence so that the fillings don’t resemble food, but rather, glittery fish scales or gems.
Colored dental fillings are fine for children, but I’m a grown up child and want a red crown. I want to be ‘Robert the Red-Tooth’. My old teeth with metal fillings are all cracking and I’m about to get yet another crown. You wouldn’t happen to know of a facility that makes crowns in bright colors, would you? Most of what I find while searching the internet is companies whose goal is to match the surrounding teeth.
I Read Your Blog Its Really Awesome And very informatative To me.
I Also Want To share Some thing about Swipeup Assignments.
“SwipeUP Assignments has been a game-changer for me! Their prompt, high-quality service has eased my academic stress. I highly recommend them to anyone seeking top-notch assignment assistance. Thank you, SwipeUP!”
https://swipeupassignments.com/