What To Do If Your Child's Adult Teeth Start To Appear Before The Baby Teeth Come Out
Posted on: 2 April 2018
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Your child may have recently noticed extra teeth growing in behind his or her baby teeth. After telling you about this, it's something you may think of as a strange phenomenon, but it happens more often than a lot of parents realize. When adult teeth start pushing through the gums before baby teeth have fallen out, the problem is often referred to as over-retained teeth. It might not seem like that big of a deal, but you'll need to bring your child into the dental office to meet with a children's dental care specialist.
Why Does It Happen?
There is no exact reason why this happens to some kids and not others. As a child gets older, the adult teeth start growing in, pushing through the gums and making the baby teeth loose so that they'll eventually fall out. However, then there are times like this when the baby teeth don't fall out for some children, causing their parents to wonder what is going on. In many cases, it's simply a matter of genetics. There is no way to predict if it's something that will happen or not until those adult teeth suddenly start growing in behind the baby teeth.
How Is the Situation Resolved?
The children's dental care specialist will need to consult with your child and perform an inspection of the teeth to get a complete visual idea of what is going on. The specialist may even request to take X-rays of the teeth. Not all cases of over-retained teeth are treated the same way. The specialist may tell you that there is nothing you need to do at this moment – it may just be a waiting game for your child, especially if those baby teeth are starting to get a lot looser. If the baby teeth don't feel loose at all and the adult teeth are already creeping their way through the gums and are visible inside the mouth, the specialist may recommend extracting those baby teeth to give the adult teeth time to shift into the spots where the baby teeth originally were. The specialist will speak to you about the exact method of treatment he or she recommends based on your child's situation.
Seeing adult teeth growing in behind baby teeth may seem like an unusual sight. While it may be something you've never seen before, it's something many other children have experienced at some point in their lives. When situations like these happen, you'll need to bring your child into the office to see a children's dental care specialist to find out what steps must be taken to solve the problem.