Should children have their milk teeth extracted to prevent permanent teeth from growing crooked?

Removing children’s milk teeth may not be enough to make the adult teeth straighten themselves out spontaneously.

The reason why the baby teeth have not fallen out on their own is usually due to 2 reasons:

1) The adult teeth erupting out of alignment

2) The adult teeth are not present

Reason #2 can be detected by having an xray of the jaws taken to check if all your daughter’s permanent teeth are developing normally. Some people are just born with an incomplete set of permanent teeth. Baby teeth that have no permanent teeth to replace them can function well for many years into adulthood.

Your dentist may be able to detect any tooth alignment or jaw developmental issues even in a young child and give you more specific advice, at your routine hygiene (scaling) appointments.

Some issues do sort themselves out as your child grows. Others may progress into more severe problems that are costly or more difficult to treat when your child is older. Sometimes, early intervention can help prevent severe crooked teeth from even occurring in the first place.

I usually prefer not to extract baby teeth prematurely for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it is not a guaranteed way to prevent the adult teeth from becoming crowded. Secondly, if it is your child’s first visit to the dentist, her first memory and experience of it should not be of an extraction! Especially if the baby teeth are not already very loose, extracting them can be more difficult than expected.

I hope this helps!

May I know how old your little girl is? You are absolutely right. In most cases, the adult teeth will cause the milk teeth to be mobile and subsequently lost, making space for the adult teeth.

In this photo, it looks like the two side adult teeth are erupted but the two front milk teeth are still present. My advice will be to seek an opinion from an orthodontist to check for the reason why this has happened BEFORE extacting the milk teeth. Sometimes it may be because two lower adult teeth are missing and in this case, you might want to keep the baby teeth for as long as possible.

The orthodontist will carry out a thorough examination and take x-rays if necessary before advising you whether the milk teeth needs to be extracted.

I hope this helps and good luck!

It is always worrying for parents when the permanent teeth start to erupt and appear to be crooked. Yes you are correct to be worried about milk teeth which are not shaky at this stage. This can be due to the permanent teeth not erupting immediately below the milk teeth and in very rare conditions where the permanent teeth are not present at all.

You should seek an experienced dentist or orthodontist to examine your child. Typically an xray will be taken to check for the presence and location of the adult teeth.

3 out of 4 children have crooked teeth and hence it might be of great benefit if you look up myofunctional development and MyoBrace on in the internet. We find that Myobrace can help correct crooked teeth spontaneously (ages 6-15yrs) and in many instances we can avoid conventional braces treatment at a later age.

All will be well

Dr Samintharaj Kumar

General Dental Surgeon