If your child, like most other children, are a little bit nervous about visiting the dentist, you’ve no doubt started to scratch your head to find ways to calm them down and get them over the nerves and jitters that they’ve been dealing with.

This can be a pretty tall task for any parent!

But according to Dr. Rafiq, a dentist in Woodhaven Michigan there are definitely some things that you can do to help your children overcome their fear of the dentist and even get them to start looking forward to these regular meetings to make sure that their smile is exactly where it needs to be.

Here are three tips and tricks to help you talk to your child about visiting the dentist in a way that makes things a lot easier for everyone involved.

Start visits to the dentist at a young age

The earlier that your child starts to visit the dentist, the less stress they are going to have simply because the process is going to become normal quite quickly.

A lot of the fear that children have when it comes to visiting the dentist is a fear of anticipation, getting nervous about things that haven’t even happened yet or aren’t likely to happen, either. By visiting the dentist frequently when they are young, and by looking through kid-friendly dentist information, they can set different expectations and they won’t worry about visiting the dentist later on in life.

Keep early visits simple, straightforward, and quick

It’s also really important that you and your dentist do absolutely everything in your power to make sure that the first few visits that your child makes to the dentist are relatively simple, very straightforward, and as quick (and painless) as humanly possible.

This deflates a lot of the nerves that kids feel about visiting the dentist, and again, it sets different expectations for your children moving forward.

Be open, upfront, and honest about the experiences they will have at the dentist

Children can get very overwhelmed when it comes to new and somewhat scary experiences, especially when a stranger in a laboratory coat is going to be poking and prodding their mouths!

By being upfront, open, and honest with your children about the experience they are going to have, and by answering all of their questions as best you can before and during the visit, you shouldn’t have any problem alleviating the anxiety and nervousness that your child would otherwise feel.