Guest post by Adita Divecha, Karan’s mother

One of the problems I face is that Karan does not like to open his mouth when you ask him to. This was quite a problem when his milk teeth were falling – some have still not fallen. When he feels the tooth is loose, he tries to pull it off with his fingers and keeps on fiddling with it. He makes his face, clothes, the sofa and the bedsheets all bloody. He does not allow me to check his mouth and holds it tightly shut. And he does not cry.

Sometimes he has put pencils or crayons in his mouth and its quite difficult to take them out. I have been bitten a few times while trying to take things out of his mouth. Right now, he is getting a new molar but the old one has not yet fallen. He was biting down on the right side of his mouth and grimacing so I thought he had hurt himself there or perhaps had a blister. After coaxing him for many days to open his mouth slightly wider, I have found that he is getting a new tooth except it is coming out in his palate on the right side next to the molar which has not yet fallen.

Something will have to be done to ease his discomfort. He is of course not going to sit in a dentist’s clinic and open his mouth to let the dentist check and do something about it. I have been told that children like Karan are usually taken to a hospital. Their teeth are checked and x-rayed and then worked on usually under anaesthesia as they refuse to sit in the chair, open their mouths and keep it open for the dentist to work on. I am sure that other kids also don’t like going to the dentist but with special kids like Karan it is difficult and different.