5 Reasons Why Baby Teeth Are Important

In our lifetime, we have two sets of teeth called baby teeth (also known as primary, deciduous, or milk teeth) and adult teeth (also called permanent teeth.) Usually, infants start developing dentition at six months of age, and by the time they turn three, they have the complete set of deciduous pearly whites, which are twenty in number. 

When a kid turns six or seven, their infant dentitions start to fall out and get replaced by adult teeth. By age twenty-one, an average adult has thirty-two dentitions (including four wisdom dentitions.) We have sixteen on the top arch and sixteen on the bottom one. Some of us have even more or less pearly whites.

Though we all know that our child will lose all the twenty primary dentitions by the time s/he is a teenager, the way you care for these twenty baby teeth will determine the quality of their thirty-two permanent dentitions.

Let us learn more about the significance of milk teeth for your child as an infant as well as an adult.

The Synergy Between Baby And Adult Teeth

Your child will have his or her primary dentitions till the permanent ones (underneath the baby teeth) are ready to emerge.

• The primary tooth’s roots dissolve, making tooth loss, which falls off eventually.
• A few weeks later, a permanent tooth comes up.
• If a child loses a primary tooth much before the permanent one is ready to come out, or if the baby tooth gets knocked off accidentally, or the dentist removes it due to some tooth disease, the space where the baby tooth was must be saved.
• The dentist would put a space maintainer where the primary tooth used to be till the time the adult tooth is ready to emerge.
• A space maintainer is a tiny metal device that encircles the space which needs to be saved. It will hold the space for the adult tooth till the tooth is ready to erupt, preventing other adjacent dentitions from drifting into or tipping toward the empty space.

Five Reasons Why Primary Teeth Are Important

Apart from helping your child to chew and speak during their initial years, the primary pearly whites serve another crucial role which is saving space for the child’s future adult dentitions. Here are the top five reasons why baby teeth are important for a child in the long run:

1. Nutritional benefit – With milk teeth, your child is able to chew food properly and get maximum nutrition out of them. Our pearly whites help us to tear, grind, and cut food so that it is reduced into smaller pieces that are easy to swallow and digest. Chewing helps in releasing lubricants and enzymes, which enhance digestion. 

We have different types of dentition in our mouth that serve various purposes, such as incisors that enable cutting food as we bite into it, while canines are more extended and help tear food. Our premolars mash food, and our tongue aids in moving food up to our pearly whites. If babies do not have teeth in place, it will affect the proper chewing, digestion, and overall nutritional intake of the child.

1. Alignment and positioning of adult teeth – By keeping space for our adult dentitions, deciduous dentitions guide permanent teeth into their proper positions. If your kid loses a primary tooth earlier than usual due to tooth decay or injury, the other dentitions might shift into the space created by the fallen tooth. If this happens, your permanent dentition will not have enough room to come out. This can result in crooked or crowded pearly whites.
2. Speech and facial development – Successful pronunciation of syllables and words requires perfect coordination of muscles and teeth. Speech production is a complex process that depends on various parts of our mouth, including lips, tongue, teeth, vocal tract, and cheeks. 

Though some oral structures might have a more significant role in speech production than others, they all must interact properly with each other for a good speech. Speech can be affected if any one of these structures is not in place. 

If your child’s pearly whites are correctly positioned, it enhances the pronunciation of words and also builds confidence in children, and encourages speech. The tooth structure also supports the development of facial muscles and gives shape to your kid’s face.

1. Focus and self-esteem – Our smile affects our self-esteem; it is the same with children. If we keep our kid’s pearly whites healthy and shiny, it builds confidence in them. Children want to smile more and share their joy when they feel confident about the way their smile looks. 

If there are dental issues and pain, your child will struggle to concentrate on activities at home or in school. Tooth decay also hampers a child’s social interactions, eventually affecting their self-esteem and confidence. Children might start avoiding school, and parents would have to miss work to get their kids to dentists in case of emergencies.

1. Healthy adult teeth – Since permanent dentitions develop very close to the baby dentitions, it is essential that baby dentitions do not decay or develop cavities. If babies do develop cavities and it is not treated, it can hamper the development of permanent pearly whites and potentially damage the adult tooth lying underneath.

Baby dentitions set the ground for healthy adult pearly whites. Hence, it is essential that we pay attention to our child’s teeth with proper dental hygiene and regular visits to the dentist. Getting your child to a dentist at an early age helps them get used to dentist visits in the future, and you can start getting your child to a dentist by the time they turn one.