There may not appear to be an obvious surface level correlation between the child’s dental appointment and the child development psychology.
However, on the deeper levels, understanding of the child development psychology forms the foundation of the behavioral science, which then broadly determines the coping abilities of children in any challenging environment.
This science helps us to connect between the causes of fear that can come in the way of dental appointments. ‘Fear’ is an acronym for ‘false evidence appearing real’.
The best way to deal with fear is to address it. Thus, it becomes highly vital to listen to the children during the low moments of the appointment.
With the knowledge of Neurolinguistic Programing, it gets easy to tap into third level listening skills where we can empathize on the real reasons why children are not able to cope.
Empathy followed by suitable action of understanding, making accurate changes in approach can be of utmost help during the treatment. These little tweaks in our approach reroute children’s neural pathway so they can then visualize better perspective of the current challenging situation.
Once we can go through the process of addressing fear provoking causes, we can establish a deeper connection that leads to strong rapport which is indeed one of the key factors that helps one to deal better.
Its crucially important that children’s adaptability, acceptance, tolerance, temperament to the treatment should be pre-discussed at length prior to starting any treatment. This helps the dentist to preformat behavioral modification technique, so that children can have positive dental experiences each time.