Do you have a child over 4 who has never been to the dentist? Please be honest.

[whippet]

I was reading something recently about the high % of primary school children in some areas who have never ever been to a dentist.

If this applies to you/ your children, would you be willing to explain why?

It's not intended to be a witch-hunt - am just generally interested in what prevents people from taking their kids....

DS1 is on a huge amount of medicine which has discoloured and stained his teeth badly, it looks like they are rotting which is why i pleaded with the dentist he is at now to take him on, it turns out they are not rotting just stained.

If i am honest with you all, which i will be i forget so often to broush thier teeth

I am trying to set up a system to remeber, i do mine before they are up and after they are in bed so can't remember that way.

My mouth was fine, never had any filling or anything, i have extremley wonky teeth but thats all, i brush my teeth everyday yet when i went to see hanibal the dentist she accused me of never brushing them and said i had bad gum disease and i should brush them hard enough everyday to make them bleed. She had a good rifle round and since then my mouth has hurt a fair bit. I will not be going back, like i said earlier i will see if i can swap my space for ds2.

I think it's so that you have the protective effect of fluoride all night or something, whippet.

I take ds (5) regularly but last time was excrutiatingly embarrassing. No dentist has ever done anything more than look in his mouth but when we got called, ds refused to go in - hid beneath a couch, refused to come out, was clinging to the leg so I couldn't drag him out. Horrible. I tried threats, bribery, everything I could think of and nothing worked. In desperation, I 'pretended' to call dh - ds wasn't shifting so ended up speaking to dh. Turned out he'd left work VERY early and was about to walk past the dentists - between the pair of us we managed to cajole/manhandle ds in but blimey, it was painful.

Next time, I'm arranging it for a day when dh is around - I'm going to make sure I'm somewhere a long, long way away!

in theory, if you look on NHS Direct you should be able to find a local NHS dentist. If not, contact your local Primary Care Trust - they have a responsibility to make sure there are dentists available.

I tried to register my ds with my dentist before 1st birthday but was told thet wouldn't see him until 3 . As i could have predicted when recently took him for his first check up he wouldn't go anywhere near. It's probably now going to take the 2 years we've wasted to convince him to open his mouth for dentist!

Well, mine didn't get looked at by dentist until age 4+, but they came with me every time and saw me in 'the big chair'. Great excitement all round when they got to sit in it too. A rite of passage