The Estonian Health Insurance Fund pays for the treatment of children under 19 years old!

Successful dental care for children is the result of a trusting relationship between child and doctor. For this relationship to develop, a child’s first dental visit should be playful and painless. The dentist will talk to the child about teeth, cleaning teeth, tooth sockets, etc. The parent can help to foster this relationship by trusting and supporting the doctor and the child. At home, it is not a good idea to talk in terms of ‘it doesn’t hurt’ or ‘they are drilling the tooth’. Doctors communicate with children in a language they understand, which can often seem unusual to adults.

The first visit could be around the 2nd or 3rd year of the child’s life, when most of the milk teeth have been cut in the mouth. At this visit, oral hygiene is assessed, the order in which teeth are cut, soft tissue attachments (e.g. gills) and teeth are checked.
Tooth cavities also develop in milk teeth and need treatment. Milk teeth also ache and cause chronic inflammation. In children, cavities form and develop over a short period of time and unnoticed. For example, a cavity between two teeth may not be noticed by a parent until it has grown into a large lesion and the tooth starts to hurt. A cavity is suspected if the tooth has become sensitive to sweet foods, there is sensitivity to cold or hot foods, the child complains of toothache.

If your child is not ready to sit alone in the chair, he or she can do so with a parent!