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

Doctor's Answer

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!

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