Kids and Braces

Posted on November 17, 2010 
Filed Under Parenting, Physical Health

My daughter was in a panic. She accidentally threw away her retainer at a New Year’s party. We were already 25 minutes away when I called the host family and explained the situation. The man of the house told me he’d look for that expensive piece of plastic and metal. Later, he told me that he donned some gloves and went through three large garbage bags of post-party trash before finally finding the retainer. My daughter wept with relief, and a valuable lesson – about putting that thing in her pocket, or her purse – but NOT on her plate – was learned.

Maybe you’ve been there? Seems more and more parents have children in braces. According to the Wall Street Journal,

The number of children 17 and younger getting orthodontic treatment has grown 46% over the past decade to 3.8 million in 2008.

That’s an interesting stat.  Perhaps your family is included there?

We’ve had four of our kids so far, in braces, with certainty that at least one more will have a metal mouth. Our orthodontist who has delivered dramatic results, and he has really worked with us in helping the children have proper bites and straight teeth. I’m good with it all – in fact, I wore braces as a teen.

The exception in childhood orthodontic success for us is that one of the kids, after two years or so of braces, went through a growth spurt, and the jaw expanded and threw the entire treatment out of whack. So those two years were essentially wasted, bringing to mind the lack of guarantee when it comes to early-use of braces.

Are your kids in braces? Do you subscribe to the early treatment approach? Have you had a negative experience with kids and braces?

Comments

Leave a Reply

Comments are moderated and will not appear on johnfullerblog.com until they've been approved. While we are eager to facilitate conversation by publishing most comments, we may withhold one from time to time if we deem it offensive, vulgar, overly personal, cynical, disrespectful, irrelevant, redundant or unnecessarily contentious.
Comments on John Fuller's blog may not refer specifically to any current electoral candidate, or any measure on a current ballot – at any level of local, state, or federal government. Focus on the Family is a non-profit 501(c)(3) entity, and therefore cannot take a position on specific votes. Nor can we display any such statements on our Web sites. Likewise, we cannot discuss here the personal viewpoints of people like Dr. Dobson or Jim Daly on political candidates or ballot measures. Any posts to this forum which violate these rules will be removed. There is an alternative venue for this type of discussion. Some activities of this nature are undertaken by Focus on the Family Action, a 501(c)(4) organization, and its media outlet, Citizenlink.
Finally, if you would like to contact our ministry directly, please feel free to do so from one of our FAQs.