

If your child has crooked teeth or a misaligned bite, straightening them will accomplish much more than simply improving their appearance. Properly oriented teeth are easier to clean, meaning your child will be able to brush and floss more effectively, drastically lowering their risk for cavities and gum disease. At Wash Park Pediatric Dentistry, we can offer a wide variety of options for orthodontics in Denver, CO to help your child get the beautifully straight smile they deserve as quickly and easily as possible. To discuss your child’s options, contact us today.
Phase 1 Orthodontics is a type of treatment used to correct alignment issues as soon as they show up, which is typically when the child has a combination of baby and adult teeth. Phase 1 Orthodontics is what gives adult teeth have the best chance of coming in straight. The baby teeth essentially “clear the path” for the adult teeth, so we'll alleviate crowding and crossbites or stop habits like finger/thumb sucking and by using oral appliances. We can proactively help a child get a perfectly straight set of teeth instead of depeding on braces alone.
If a baby tooth goes missing too early, this can actually lead to the surrounding teeth drifting out of place and blocking the path of an incoming adult tooth, leading to a wide variety of orthodontic issues. To avoid this, we can place a space maintainer in your child’s mouth so their adult tooth can erupt unobstructed. These tiny appliances are comfortable, only take a few minutes to apply, and can save a whole lot of hassle down the road for your child’s smile.
Although many babies soothe themselves through sucking on a pacifier or their thumb, these habits can interfere with your child’s oral development down the road, particularly with how the mouth forms to fit teeth. With every checkup, especially as your child loses their baby teeth and gains their permanent teeth, we’ll keep a close eye on the spacing inside their mouth. We want to avoid jutting front teeth, crowded teeth, and other issues. To treat these, we can use custom appliances and other therapies, according to their needs.
A crossbite is when the upper and lower teeth are offset from left to right, causing the upper teeth to sit inside of the lower teeth, which is the opposite of how a normal bite should work. This can lead to excessive tooth wear, stiffness in the jaw, and negatively affect the overall look and shape of a child’s smile. As you might have guessed, crossbite correction is specifically designed to fix this problem. This may involve using braces, a lower lingual holding arch (LLHA), or a rapid palatal expander (RPE) to shift the teeth and guide the development of the palate to create a well-balanced and functional bite.
Sometimes, the hard palate of a child’s mouth can be so narrow that it leads to teeth crowding, plus it can inhibit their ability to breathe normally (mostly during sleep). A rapid palatal expander is a small metal bar that is placed within the mouth using loops on a child’s upper molars. Over time, this bar is gradually widened, slowly increasing the size of the palate as a child grows. This creates more room for the teeth to come in properly, plus it can open up a child’s airway to help them get better sleep.
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