Doing the Work

I have droned on and on about how not doing the things you are supposed to do with braces won't get you anywhere with your treatment. This message is not getting through. Let me break it down again:

Not wearing headgear = no progress
Not wearing elastics =  no progress
Not coming to appointments regularly = no progress
Broken braces = no progress

We had some instances in the past few days that made it evident that some parents and kids do believe that simply having braces in your mouth make the teeth move. A Mom said that her daughter threw out her headgear 3 weeks ago. This was followed up with a question as to how much longer she had to wear it. The answer is about 3 weeks longer than originally planned plus whatever time it takes to make up for the time she hasn't worn it at all. Another Mom had not had her kids in for appointments in 6 months for whatever reason. Then she asked how much longer they would be in braces. The answer to that question is 6 months longer than she thought because they missed 6 months of appointments. If your child was a diabetic and they threw out their insulin, would you wait 3 weeks to report that to the doctor? Would you wait 6 months for an appointment? I am not making light of having a child that is a diabetic--I am trying to illustrate that  orthodontics should be treated with the same importance as any other condition. Really.

Simply owning the medicine doesn't cure the ailment. Parking in the parking lot of the gym does not equal working out. As much as we would like that to be true, it just isn't and never will be. To improve anything in your life, your health, your relationships--you have to do the work.

Kids in braces have to be made to understand that they have to do the work. They aren't getting braces just for the heck of it. It isn't so their parents can torture them or ruin their social lives. They have to realize that they have a dental problem that can have lifelong consequences if not corrected. While the consequences probably aren't life threatening they are still consequences. Malocclusions can lead to a host of dental problems that can lead to a host of health problems that can be serious. No joke. My brother in law's mother died because her dental health was so poor that it lead to heart disease. She died of a massive heart attack in her early 60's. Really.

Orthodontic treatment can be life altering in more ways than one. Commit to it and, as a parent, prepare your kids to do the work. We can only do so much in the office. In the words of Jerry Maguire (before Tom Cruise turned into a wackadoodle), "Help me, help you. Help me...help you."