I have a crown on my front tooth, so the braces would NEVER stick to it. I had to get a big, ugly metal band around it to hold it on.
My teeth were bad enough that if I’d been born ten years later (after orthodontics practice had advanced further) they would have broken my jaw and reset it as part of the process. I’ve had some teeth removed and others reground.
Tell your friend to suck it up, take an Advil, and stop complaining.
And get off my lawn.
My daughter just got hers a few weeks ago. There was a week of Advil during the day and Advil and Benedryl to help her sleep at night. Then all was fine. We haven’t done any adjustments yet, though.
These stories are seriously worrying me. My eight year old is supposed to start braces in January but if it is going to hurt him this much and stop him eating then IT IS NOT WORTH IT and I will NOT do it to him!
Is it really worth it to have years and years of pain (twelve years of braces for one of you posting - what’s the point??? That’s a HUGE chunk of your life!) for straight teeth?
You might know that I am a) British and b) have straight teeth naturally so am a total virgin at this but I am thinking that it is barbaric to put my kid through this. He has no idea that it is going to hurt and I feel like a prize shit now…
Really, you can relax, the techniques are much improved from days of yore. Depending on the treatment it is not that bad according to my 12yo daughter who is somewhat oversensitive to pain and suffering. And the pain recedes after each tightening about 6weeks apart), but there are always new colored bands that she gets so there is something to look forward to.
But an 8yo might feel differently and have a different pain tolerance. I know at 8yo there was no way that my daughter would be able to put up with it as gracefully as she is now.
What is with the trend to put braces on kids so young?
This is an effort to save pulling his teeth. He has a very long, very narrow jaw, and his four front teeth are currently spaced as two jammed in front and two about a quarter of an inch back in his mouth behind them. At this rate he will end up with a double row of teeth. So the plan is to put in a palate expander on his lower jaw which should give his teeth more room to be moved into at a later date. This all sounds rather painful to me… On the other hand, he looks rather like a shark at the moment…
Apparently the rush is that the jaw plates fuse at around eight or nine for the lower jaw so there is less time to get the expansion in than for the upper teeth. I am going to get some more opinons from other dentists in the area first but I’ve heard the same thing from two places now.
Seriously though at eight I think it’s a bit much to ask of him as he doesn’t care one whit about his looks right now nor is it affecting his health yet. I am seriously ambivalent about it all. He will also be non compliant about all the brushing and care so I can forsee endless nagging and battles over that which I really am dreading. If he was older and was going into it for himself I presume he’d be a bit more motivated to keep on going on bad days.
Gah, only another couple of months and then we have to make the final decision. Would it really be so bad if he had four teeth yanked and braces put on in his teens?? Seems such a waste of good teeth though…
Oh man… flashback to my mom making me climb into the dumpster behind the cafeteria to find my (2nd or 3rd) retainer which I had chucked in on the side of my lunch plate… :eek: It was the 70’s, we didn’t have a lot of $, and retainers cost about $200…
I never lost another one, though. Oh, the horror…
For myself plain aspirin works best for dental pain. I use ibuprofen for headaches and joint pain, but aspirin for the mouth.
Honestly, I hold a grudge against my parents for NOT getting me braces as a kid. They could have afforded it, and my dentist recommended it many times throughout the years but they “didn’t think it was necessary” :rolleyes:
Kids are much more resilient, and it is actually LESS painful for them because their bone and gums are much more pliable. As an adult, it is torture.
As stupid as it may sound to you, having a decent smile has meant so much to me. I never realized the boost to my self confidence it could bring, let alone the health benefits of actually being able to care for and clean all of my teeth. If I had to do it all over again, I would. I’d pay twice as much and wear them twice as long, even. And I’m still pissed off at my parents for not taking care of it when a) it would have hurt less and b) it would have cost less.
Well, it didn’t really ruin my life or anything. Also, I got them off, what, fourteen years or so ago? They’re probably much better now. And the reason I had to start in the second grade with a Frankel and then in the sixth grade have them pull ten recalcitrant baby teeth and put in a Lars device on the top and braces on the bottom and then eventually braces on both top and bottom with hooks and rubber bands was that I had Really Bad Teeth. Seriously. You know how you’d draw a really offensive Japanese monster movie scientist? That was me. (I had the glasses, too!) I didn’t just have the world’s most horrible overbite, I had no room in my jaw so teeth were coming in sideways.
If my parents hadn’t done it (to God knows WHAT expense) not only would it have been a lot more painful and expensive to do it in the future, I probably would have had chronic ongoing tooth and jaw pain, not to mention major and intense ugliness. (Seriously - if I wasn’t careful, my front teeth would hang out over my lower lip.) Between the time my permanent teeth started to come in and when I got my braces off in high school, I never smiled with my lips parted. Not so much because of the braces, but because of the crippling hideousness.
I mean, maybe I’d have been a beauty queen in Britain, but here in the US I’m damned grateful to my parents. Although I wasn’t at the time. (Sorry for the gratuitous British teeth crack, but you started it.)
In my opinion, it depends on how functional his teeth are without the work. Not how pretty–how functional. (I read your subsequent post, but know too little to judge. My teeth are “straight enough”–no braces.)
My daughter is nine, and they believe there will be two phases. Her front teeth and the second set are pretty spread out, and the fear is that her canines are going to come in above her gum line if they don’t create a proper spot to put them in now. They could move her canines around later, but apparently that is a bigger deal than creating the space for them now (plenty of room in her mouth for teeth - which in her case is part of the issue).
Yes, but I’m generally the Queen of Wimp. That’s why I think maybe the orthodontist did something not quite right.
I had braces in the 70’s and the adjustments were painful. I remember upper and lower jawbone aches that were horrible. I still flip the bird when I drive past the orthodontist’s office 
He’s probably long dead - at least I hope he is, he was a dick.
So anyway, for the 8 year old getting braces this is a good question for you to ask your orthodontis - how does he propose pain management.
ahem
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory. The whole point being that, because it’s not a steroid, it will not compromise your immune system.
Goddamnit, I keep reading the latter part of the thread title as “Dealing With The Palin”.
I really could use some help dealing with the nonstop Palin coverage. I don’t think Lortab alone is enough.
My treatment was also in two phases. The first was to arrest my insane overbite (damn near a full inch), with bands on my four front teeth plus the two back molars on the top, plus headgear. I was 10. After that bit (a year? maybe 18 months?), i got those bands off and wore a retainer until those changes “set.”
Then, I got a full set of bands to straighten everything out. I wore those most of the way through HS.
Sure, braces and glasses were a drag, but I survived and my teeth are beautiful now. I don’t regret it one bit.
I had braces for seven years. They hurt for a few days after they’re put on or adjusted, but then it goes away pretty much entirely (unless you get the inside of your mouth caught on them :eek:). Until then, over-the-counter painkillers and lots and lots of ice cream.
YES!! Totally worth it! It might not matter much to him now, but during the teen years he will get teased mercilessly about his teeth, thus grinding his self esteem even further in to the pavement. projecting I had one undescended eye tooth, leaving a gap, and one eye tooth that grew out instead of down which created a snaggle fang. The rest of my teeth were turned this way and that.
Honestly, the worst pain was the procedure to prepare my teeth for braces: the spacers. They’re these elastics that they jam inbetween your teeth to give a gap to let the braces work. I couldn’t even let liquids touch my mouth that weekend, they hurt so bad.
However, I get so many compliments on my nice straight teeth now that I’d do braces again ten times over if I had to. It is very much worth the sacrifice.