Possible Early Orthodontic Treatments for Your Child’s Dental Development

The best way to know what orthodontic treatment will be best for your child is to come in for an appointment. Please call us today at 949-770-8011. We are based in Mission Viejo, and serve areas around Orange County to make sure that you have access to quality orthodontic care.

Phase 1 orthodontic treatments are designed to help your child avoid costly and more difficult dental care in the future. Some examples of possible treatments include:

• Space Maintenance – One of the simplest forms of treatment is a space maintainer. These maintainers are placed on the teeth around a baby tooth that has been lost, in order to make sure that the space between the teeth is maintained, and the new tooth grows in the correct spot.
• Partial Braces – Traditional braces are designed to correct permanent adult teeth. But there are partial braces that can both straighten the front of your child’s teeth (to improve their confidence) in only a few months, improving their confidence and setting the stage for their adult teeth to grow into their proper location.
• Palatal Expansion – This is a mechanism that goes inside the mouth to fix problems with bites. It is designed to expand the jaw and help teeth grow into their correct location.
• Maxillary Protraction – Designed to fix underbites, the maxillary protraction device helps guide your child’s jaw (which can move more easily than it can as an adult) towards the correct position so that the bite is fixed in a way that will continue as an adult.

Many adults that require braces could have benefitted from one of these early orthodontic treatments, most of which take less time as a child, cost less, are easier to maintain in the future, and come at a time when it is easier socially to try to adjust teeth.