Why Children Need Mouthguards

Most dental imperfections occur when you have an accident. For instance, a chipped tooth, cracks, and missing teeth can be the result from childhood accidents, such as falls, crashes, and from athletics. Because children live such active lifestyles, it is important to keep them well-protected. Of course, as a parent, you may feel the urge to cover them in bubble-wrap, but that isn’t likely to happen. Instead, you want to hit them with the right protective gear that will keep them safe. Most parents assume that knee-pads, elbow-pads, and a helmet is all that is required to keep their child safe. But actually, mouth guards are equally, if not more important, as other protective gear.

In this blog, we will discuss why protective mouth guards are important to your child’s safety and could save them dental visits in the future.

Contact Sports Injuries

Mouthguards are extremely important for the well-being of your child. For instance, when your child is playing sports, they can easily become hurt. One simple hit to the face and they can bite their lip, or worse. With a mouthguard, oral injuries such as gum and tooth injuries are limited. This can be a huge benefit to young kids that play contact sports. Football, basketball, and hockey, are all contact sports. With this “contact” injuries can happen, such as broken bones and teeth. Though a broken bone can be placed in a cast and healed back to normal, dental injuries are not as easy to fix.

If you chip or lose a tooth in a sports injury, your whole smile could be compromised. For instance, if your child gets smacked hard enough to suffer a tooth extraction, the other roots of their teeth could be affected. Worse, if your child loses a tooth, and you make no effort to fix or replace the tooth, the other teeth can overcrowd the missing tooth to fill the gap. This means your child’s smile could suffer misalignments and permanently crooked teeth for life.

Preventing Cosmetic Injuries

When your child participates in a contact sport, a minor injury is expected; contact sports require physical collision which more times than not leads to anl injury. It is important to note that though contact sports don’t mean that injuries are guaranteed, they are far more likely. Contact sports, however, are the culprit of other more serious injuries, such as cosmetic mishaps. When your child does not wear a mouthguard, they can be vulnerable to other injuries that can have lasting effects.

But, how do these injuries happen?

In contact sports, your child plays to the best of their ability; running and jumping as hard as they can to score a point, basket, or a goal. But without the proper protection, their whole body is vulnerable to extreme hits. One of the most dangerous hits would be a hit to the face. Facial hits can be the most dangerous for more reasons than one. For instance, a cranial hit can lead to a concussion. Second, a hit to the head could lead to a serious injury to your child’s teeth; their teeth could either collide against each other, bite down on their tongue, or jam through their lip. Either injury is painful and results in hundreds of dollars in corrective and cosmetic surgery.

Gentle Touch Smiles For Kids

If you would like to protect your child from serious dental injuries, having them fitted for a mouthguard is the best way. At The Smile Zone, our dentists can have your child fitted for a customized mouthguard. This will keep their teeth safe while they play sports or any other physical activity. With a mouthguard, you won’t have to worry about the toll their love for sports is having on their teeth. Not only that, but by instilling in your children the importance of dental protection, they will be able to have gorgeous teeth their whole lives and appreciate the quality of their teeth that much more! Contact us today for an appointment.