Can’t afford expensive dental work for all of your kids?

Good! Avoid doing it on all of them and you’ll be a lot happier.

One thing I have heard a fair bit in the past two years is parents having to triage between their kids when it comes to orthodontics and dental care.

The cost of going through the process of getting all the scans done and then often multiple appliances over several years can easily run over $10k.

And so many parents that have multiple children are only able to go through this process for one of their children.

So they literally think to themselves “which of my children should I invest in?” Which often translates to “Who do I think has the brightest future?”

But in choosing orthodontics, they unknowingly potentially damage the future of the child they chose.

And so the whole thing was counterproductive.

Let’s delve into this a bit today as I think there is a much better way.

A post I recently saw on X.com

Choosing between kids has become the norm

I was browsing X.com a little while back when I came upon this post above, which seemed to frame the position of many modern parents very well.

They have multiple children with misdevelopment issues and the cost of treating them all is beyond their family budget.

Plus they often view that the one they choose will function and look better than the rest over time. Because after all they are going to ‘fix’ their teeth and give them that perfect smile that America loves so much.

On top of that many parents will believe what this person that wrote the post above believes…. that the one that gets fixed will have a better long-term health outcome.

So each and everyday parents are making this difficult choice, putting one of their children above the rest.

And I would not be surprised if there are many children out there who are a bit upset that they were not the one that was chosen.

Perhaps their brother or sister was chosen because they get better grades or behave better.

To some extent it kind of cracks that underlying assumption that parents love all of their kids equally. Because when push comes to shove and they need to choose who has a better shot of ‘making it’ in this world… they do end up choosing one over another.

Then the ‘chosen’ one goes through years of treatment

After a child is chosen, the next part is executing the dental work.

The chosen child will often have all kinds of expensive scans done and then the dentist will often prescribe a multi-year treatment plan.

Oftentimes this plan will consist of removing some teeth followed by orthodontics. Or perhaps even a palate expander and then orthodontics.

The bill over the next few years will be quite high. Probably over $10k in places like the US.

But the parents will tighten their belts on other expenses and foot the bill. Considering it to be an investment in their child’s future that is not that different from saving up to send them to college.

The chosen one will typically decline compared to his/her peers

Here is where things start to often stray from the plan.

Because the ‘chosen’ child often starts to drop across numerous dimensions. For example:

• their focus gets poorer and so their grades start to drop

• their neurology gets impacted and so their behavior starts to get worse

• even though their teeth get straighter, their face often gets a bit more assymetric

• their general health often starts to show signs of worsening

And so now the trajectory of the ‘chosen’ child begins to change vis-a-vis their siblings. They start to go into a decline whereas their children continue along their previous trajectory.

And so the gap that existed before closes. And oftentimes the other children will overtake their ‘chosen’ sibling.

In some more extreme cases I have even heard of children that go through these kinds of orthodontic treatments become the ‘problem children’. ie. the one who parents begin to worry if they will evolve into properly functioning adults.

The unchosen ones will often be more successful in life

Fast forward some more years and let time do it’s thing… and the situation in the previous paragraph typically compounds.

The siblings who didn’t do the treatment are properly functioning adults whereas the one that went through the ortho is now clearly struggling as a young adult.

Perhaps taking SSRI’s (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) because they have some depression or anxiety that they are now dealing with.

They might even be the one that chose to study at a local school rather than going away to college because of their health issues.

And this goes on for many years after. With the once ‘chosen’ one sometimes never evolving into a proper functioning adult and rather instead continuing to live with their parents as a dependant.

Meanwhile the parents have completely forgotten that once upon a time this was their ‘chosen one’ who seemed to have the brightest future.

They’ve stopped questioning how or why things evolved this way… rather attributing it to modern society and bad luck.

In the last couple of years I have heard this story/pattern quite a number of times already. I have a feeling this situation is symbolic of what happens in lots of US households these days.

What was the right path?

The right path would have been to avoid all of that dental work to begin with.

A simple flat mouthguard was all that was needed in my opinion.

And no they didn’t need to pay thousands of dollars to do Toothpillow or Myobrace with a dentist. Rather a simple flat mouthguard that they purchased off of Amazon or Aliexpress for <$100 would have sufficed just fine.

Another option would have been choosing to put flat composite on the back teeth, which is something I did with my son when he was 7 years old and was a chronic mouthbreather who was sleep disrupted and did not focus well.

Fast forward to today and he’s 12 years old, doesn’t mouthbreathe, sleeps like a rock, focuses well, and is better developed (ie. taller, better posture, etc) than 95% of the kids in his grade.

After struggling from the time he was age 2 to 7… I can tell you with absolute certainty that this positive outcome was not pure luck.

Closing thoughts

My point today is that if you are a parent now or perhaps in the future… you do not have to choose between your children as to who gets the expensive dental work.

Rather the right answer in my view is that none of them does the stupid dental work.

And rather you use simple/cheap fixes like a flat mouthguard or composite on the teeth.

When you do it this way you can help all of your children while still spending far less.

Plus I have a funny feeling you will be a lot happier with the outcome years later.