Teenagers And Wisdom Teeth Removal – Recovery Tips For Parents

Posted on: 1 April 2015

Convincing your teenager to go to the doctor and dentist regularly can be hard enough for parent. If your teenager will be having their wisdom teeth pulled, you need to be sure that you are ready to help them with recovery. Here are three things that you should do to make sure that your teen can recover with less pain and with no arguments.

1. Become Your Teen's Home Nurse

Make it clear to your teen that you are going to be monitoring their recovery just to be safe. Make sure there aren't any changes to their mouth such as redness or swelling and that your teen is taking medications properly. There are complications that can arise such as ripped out stitches or dry sockets, so be sure to monitor your teenager while recovering. Have gauze, ice packs, and other supplies on the ready to help your teenager recover.

2. Stock up on Food that Your Teen Likes

Eating the wrong food after an oral surgery procedure can slow down the healing process and in certain cases even be dangerous. If you can make sure that you have prepped your kitchen with recovery-friendly soft foods, liquids and soups, this will help. Have your teen tell you what they want before the surgery so that you are prepared. If they change their mind or have a weird food request that is on the okay list while they are recovering, try not to give them a hard time about it. A quick trip to the store is better than your teen sneaking the wrong snacks.

3. Make Recovery More Fun

Keeping your teen home from school as long as the dentist recommends is important. In order to keep your teen from going stir crazy, make sure that there are things to keep them entertained. If you can rent or stream their favorite TV show or movies, let them binge watch. Let a friend come over and hang out. If your teenager can at least be content cooped up at home, this will help them take it easy and focus on recovering.

While recovering, your teen might need comforting, and then immediately close off and say they are fine and don't need you. As a parent you need to roll with your child's mood swings and just be there for your child. Anything that you can do to make the recovery process as easy as possible will help your teen relax. The hope is that you can keep them from pushing themselves and disrupting the healing process. (For more information on dentists, contact John P Poovey DMD PC or another practitioner)

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About Marcel and the Dentist

Hi, my name is Marcel. Welcome to my site! I started it to help others learn about children's dentistry. Most of us don't remember dentist trips from our early childhood. Maybe we didn't even really care about our teeth until we started losing baby teeth. In my case, I became interested in children's dentistry as a young father. When my kids were young, I was a student, and our insurance did not cover visits to the dentist. Although my wife and I tried to teach our kids good hygiene on our own, it was difficult. When we we finally able to take them to the dentist, my little girls were scared and didn't know what was going on. Luckily, they appreciate the dentist now that they are older, but their first experiences helped teach me more about the importance of children's dentistry. Hopefully you can learn from my experiences!

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