Over the summer we took Ethan to his dental therapist appointments. They basically lasted a few minutes at a time with the aim of getting Ethan used to going. They would work on getting Ethan to sit in the chair and try to get him to open his mouth.
Ethan sat in the chair a few times, they achieved this through play. They let Ethan push the buttons to make the chair go up and down.
They never got to look in his mouth and it is a work in progress.
Last week we had our second dental appointment. I wasn’t expecting much after our last appointment but Ethan was happy to go in to the room. He wouldn’t sit in the chair but the dentist did get a quick glance in his mouth when she asked him to open. This amazed me but he did only open his mouth once.
Surprisingly the dentist was happy with this progress but she set us two new tasks. We had to move Ethan over to a new toothpaste. He was using an ice cream flavoured child’s toothpaste but they wanted us to move to a mint flavoured one. I purchased this and was expecting a battle. Darren was able to change the toothpaste without any fuss.
The second was to try to clean more of Ethan’s teeth. Thankfully Ethan has been letting us brush his teeth more in recent weeks. To make it easier we have invested in a child’s Oral B electric toothbrush. It has a smaller head than the one we were using and it has really helped to give us more access to Ethan teeth.
We have another appointment in January, and I will be very happy to tell the dentist that we have made the requested changes.
That’s great that he’s making such progress, I’m dreading Archie’s visit to the dentist it’s going to be a struggle x
It is slow progress, but it’s progress which is the most important thing ;0) x
It sounds like he’s making wonderful progress! Good luck x
He is, I’m so glad I found out about the special needs dentist. His teeth are such a worry of mine!
I know and understand the battle this is but WOW GO ETHAN!! We are at a very similar stage, Bruiser now sits in the chair to play but the dentist is yet to see his teeth 🙂
That’s great progress. We don’t have a SN dentist near us unfortunately and I can’t move D on from a basic toothpaste, she won’t use an even mild minty one. Hopefully your next appointment will go positively in January. Thanks for linking up with #SSAmazingAchievements 🙂