To think there is no help for kids anxious about needles or dental treatment?

[TeaAndBunsPlease]

My dd gets very anxious about needles and or dental treatment and she needs both. I'm at my wits end. I've no idea how to get her to undergo a blood test or dental work. She won't even get a filling done.

Aibu or are there no resources to help her deal with this anxiety?

We have a specialist dentist here who are amazing with my two. When they need hospital care like blood tests they have a brilliant team of play specialists.

These things do exist, it's just finding out they do and how to access them

We have even done the acclimatisation sessions and it was a no go!
What do these involve? Because we have done an anxiety course to help DS and if the steps from "petrified" to "managing" are too big, you will just have a setback. Each step needs to be small enough.
E.g. with spiders, thinking about spiders may be step 1, or it may be seeing a drawing of one - but it might not be that big a step.

DS had hypnotherapy for his needle phobia. It took 2 sessions. He does his own injections (growth hormone) now.

There are resources, and it sounds like you've used a lot of them. There's the community dental service, there's acclimatisation, there's gas and air, there's the wand and numbing gel. There are hospital play specialists

Ultimately at 8, there's only so much you can do if she won't accept treatment. There's no magic wand that's going to make a needle phobic 8 year old cope with dental treatment, no book, no hypnotherapy, no counciling sessions. Normally the cds are very good, and they are used to acclimatising scared children and its possible your DD just needs more sessions but she's now under a lot of pressure and stress to get the filling done.

What are you doing at home to help her? How are you acting when she's having the filling? Children pick up on a lot of subconscious queues from their parents

Is it an adult tooth or a baby tooth? I would say your last resort is referral into the hospital to see a peadiatric dentist.

@Notanotherwindow

Numbing gel at the dentist works if you can get her to try. I hate needles but you honestly don't feel the injection at all.

Numbing gel doesn't make a difference for my needle phobic son. We have to hold him down for necessary medical procedures. He's old enough now to understand it's necessary but he just doesn't have control when the phobia hits him. He will take a (nasal) PCR test without being held down now so is becoming desensitized with things he has to do regularly.

Sorry, I know that's not the solution you're looking for.

Hypnotherapy sounds like a good option. How did you find someone good and reputable?

@Velvetbee how did you go about looking for a hypnotherapist?

We had similar with DS in relation to anything medical. Even saying the word “blood” would make him start to cry and occasionally faint. We arranged some CBT. It took about 5 or 6 sessions but got to the stage where he was able to cope with an injection. He doesn’t love it or anything but can just about cope with, say, an injection.

Just to say we got the therapist privately. Just googled it and got someone local.

Thanks @Whosthebestbabainalltheworld and everyone else. Just been looking for a local person.

I googled and found a very expensive guy in posh offices in town, emailed back and forth to establish whether hypnotherapy could help, then found a woman half the price in a village 20 minutes away. She was great!
She used a mixture of visualisation (Harry Potter’s wand was involved), breathing, suggestion and we had to take teddy too.

@CarrotSticks2

There are resources, and it sounds like you've used a lot of them. There's the community dental service, there's acclimatisation, there's gas and air, there's the wand and numbing gel. There are hospital play specialists

Ultimately at 8, there's only so much you can do if she won't accept treatment. There's no magic wand that's going to make a needle phobic 8 year old cope with dental treatment, no book, no hypnotherapy, no counciling sessions. Normally the cds are very good, and they are used to acclimatising scared children and its possible your DD just needs more sessions but she's now under a lot of pressure and stress to get the filling done.

What are you doing at home to help her? How are you acting when she's having the filling? Children pick up on a lot of subconscious queues from their parents

Is it an adult tooth or a baby tooth? I would say your last resort is referral into the hospital to see a peadiatric dentist.

This. you’ve just established there are actually loads of resources many of which you’ve tried. There’s only so much the nhs can offer really.

I had very similar with dd2 when she was 10. It resulted from PTSD following a traumatic hospital stay. We worked with the play therapist, gas and air at the hospital etc Still massive issues.

EMDR with a paediatric therapist worked in the end though we paid privately. Try looking through these professional registers;
www.psychotherapy.org.uk/
www.bacp.co.uk/