My child has spaces between their baby teeth. Is that normal?

The great news is that your child is perfectly normal! Spaces between baby teeth are a great thing-especially for your wallet! As I said earlier, the body is amazing and the design of teeth is no exception to the rule. Those little gaps are the body’s pre-built mechanism to allow enough room for the larger, later erupting permanent teeth. Those spaces (called Leeway spaces) are your hopeful chance that you will avoid having to pay for braces later on.

The time to be more concerned is when your child has teeth like a supermodel. In other words, they have no spaces and perfect alignment. Beautiful as they may appear now, you are pretty much guaranteed that without any orthodontic treatment or strategic preplanning, your child will have crowded teeth as a teenager and adult. The good news is that dentistry has advanced in ways that now make it possible to understand the relationship between baby teeth, permanent teeth and skeletal growth in children. This knowledge now allows us to pre-plan in certain situations, possibly avoiding braces altogether. For further information, please refer to the “general questions” section of this book. More information will be found under the question: “How early should my child be placed in braces. How do I know if my child needs braces?”

Tags: Adult, Baby Growth, Baby Teeth, braces, Crowded Teeth, Dentistry, Exception To The Rule, Gaps, Great News, Leeway, Orthodontic Treatment, Perfect Alignment, Permanent Teeth, Pre Plan, Questions Section, Relationship, Skeletal Growth, Supermodel, Teenager, Wallet