Thursday, June 12, 2008

Dentist

Yesterday I took Matt for his first visit to the dentist.
I'll admit that I don't particularly enjoy going to the dentist, so I was quite anxious to find a fn dentist that Matt would like. We built it up a bit and he was so excited to go.
The place where we went has a child-life specialist who takes the kids through the visit to the dentist using puppets and pictures.
Matt, of course, had a bazillion questions and was fascinated by it all. She told him about the "sugar bugs" on his teeth and explained brushing to him. Then he got a purple disolving tablet that showed all the "sugar bugs" on his teeth. Anything that turned purple was a "sugar bug".
He was pretty excited to put the camera in his mouth to check out those sugar bugs and look for cavities.

But the best part of the visit had to be the chair. He went for a ride, got to wear suglasses and shockingly let the dentist not only check and count his teeth, but also do the flouride treatment.
This was cool. When we got there Matt got to choose a tooth brush and then he tried it out and had a "spitting contest" (to see how close he could get his spit to the drain) getting used to his new toothbrush. So when the dentist came in he did a very basic cleaning and check of his teeth using the toothbrush. That's also how he did the flouride treatment. Matt was so comfortable with it all.
The highlight for Matt was learning about "Mr.Thirsty" - the thing that sucks out saliva. He loved it. I was impressed. And, I learned about all sorts of stuff that I didn't know.
Matt got a clean bill of health. His jaw is in good shape, his teeth are straight and he has no cavities! We even got a report card!!!!
I'm guessing he was happy with his experience because when I asked him what he would like to do today his answer was "let's go back to the dentist to get rid of my sugar bugs!"