What To Expect When Your Child Is Getting Permanent Teeth

Some Primary Teeth Will Need To Be Removed

There is a tendency in some people to retain their primary teeth for much longer than they are needed in the oral cavity. The job of the milk teeth is to guide the successive permanent teeth into their correct position and then fall out.

In some cases, the permanent teeth may not follow the correct path of eruption and thus do not apply the required amount of pressure on the milk teeth to fall out. In other cases, the primary teeth may overstay their welcome and actually prevent the permanent teeth from erupting at all.

In both the situations, the over-retained deciduous teeth will need to be removed to allow the necessary space that the permanent tooth needs to erupt.

Some Permanent Teeth Will Not Erupt At All

There could be several reasons for this. The most common one is where the permanent tooth in question is not able to erupt out of the bone at all or only partially erupts out of the bone. A smaller jaw than is normal, an altered path of eruption or no obvious cause at all could cause this to occur.

Another reason could be the that the permanent tooth is simply absent and did not exist at all. This is is again quite common and seems to affect the front lateral incisor most often.

Irrespective of the cause that is behind it, one or multiple teeth not erupting into the oral cavity is a major problem that will have to be tackled meticulously.

READ Pros and Cons of Wisdom Teeth Removal

The Wisdom Teeth Will Almost Always Need To Be extracted

These are the last teeth to erupt and are considered to be remnants of our prehistoric selves. Human ancestors had much larger jaws that could accommodate the wisdom teeth or the third molars as they are called without any trouble.

As our diet evolved to a softer, cooked diet, our jaws grew smaller in size and in most cases can no longer find adequate space for these teeth. Thus, they cause pain and discomfort during eruption or cause injury to the cheeks after eruption.

Depending upon the space available in your jaw, your dentist may choose to extract the wisdom teeth or leave them as they are.

Conclusion

The process of permanent tooth eruption is a long one. It lasts for almost six years from the time the first teeth start erupting till the time all of them find their way into the mouth. It is actually much longer if we take the wisdom teeth into consideration as well since they generally erupt around the age of 17 or 18 years.

It is important to have patience and let nature take its course for a lot many ‘problems’ will sort themselves out without any intervention. For everything else, you have your dentist!