Back-to-School Dental Checkups and Fall Sports Mouthguards: A Gates-Chili Parent's Guide

Aug 28

5 min read

You can feel the turn around here. The school buses start doing their practice runs, the school supply aisle looks like a windstorm went through it, and somebody in your house has already outgrown last year's cleats. Somewhere near the bottom of that list, usually written on a sticky note, is a back-to-school dental checkup.

It deserves to move up. Not because we want to lecture anybody about flossing, but because September is genuinely the easiest month of the year to get this done. Schedules are still loose. The holidays are far away. And whatever is happening in your kid's mouth right now is smaller and cheaper to fix than it will be in February.

Why a back-to-school dental checkup is worth the calendar space

Summer is rough on teeth. Not dramatically so, but the routine slips. Bedtimes drift, so brushing gets skipped or done half asleep. There is more freezer pop, more lemonade, more sports drinks in the cooler at the ballfield. Kids stay at grandma's for a week and nobody is counting toothbrush minutes.

None of that ruins a smile. But it does mean that a small spot of decay that was barely visible in June can be noticeably further along by September. Cavities do not announce themselves. Kids almost never complain about one until it has reached the nerve, and by then you are looking at a bigger appointment, more chair time, and a kid who now associates the dentist with something unpleasant.

A checkup and cleaning also gives us a baseline. We can see how permanent teeth are coming in, whether there is crowding worth watching, whether sealants make sense on the back molars, whether a stubborn baby tooth needs a nudge. Those are all easier conversations to have in the fall than in the middle of a March emergency.

The fall sports problem almost nobody plans for

Section V fall sports get going fast. Soccer, field hockey, football, and by winter, basketball and wrestling. Parents plan for shin guards and helmets. Mouthguards tend to be an afterthought, usually purchased at the last minute, usually the boil-and-bite kind in a blister pack.

A boil-and-bite guard is better than nothing. Genuinely. If that is what you have on the morning of the first game, use it. But most of them end up chewed through, hanging off a facemask, or sitting in a gym bag because the kid says it makes them gag and they cannot talk with it in. A guard that lives in the bag protects nothing.

A custom-fitted mouthguard is made from an impression of your child's actual teeth. It is thinner where it can be, thicker where the impact goes, and it stays put without being clamped down on. Kids wear them because they can breathe and talk. That is the whole argument. Comfort is not a luxury feature here, it is the reason the guard is in their mouth during the play that would have cost you a front tooth.

One thing worth knowing: a front tooth knocked out at fourteen is not a one-time repair. It is a lifetime of maintenance. Crowns get replaced. Implants need the jaw to be done growing. The math on a mouthguard is not close.

What to do if a tooth actually gets knocked out

It happens, guard or no guard. Here is the short version, and it is worth knowing before you need it.

Find the tooth and pick it up by the crown, the chewing part. Do not touch the root.
If it is dirty, rinse it gently with milk or water for a few seconds. Do not scrub it, and do not use soap.
If you can, put it back in the socket and have your child bite gently on a clean cloth to hold it there.
If that is not possible, keep it moist. Milk is the best option. A container of your child's own saliva works too. Plain water is a last resort.
Call a dentist immediately. The first thirty to sixty minutes matter more than anything else you do.

A baby tooth is different. Do not try to reinsert a knocked-out baby tooth, because you can damage the permanent tooth developing underneath. Still call us, because we will want to look at what is going on around it.

We handle emergency dentistry, and a knocked-out or cracked tooth is exactly the kind of thing we will work into the schedule. Call the office. Do not wait until Monday.

The habits that actually survive a school year

Everyone knows the advice. Twice a day, two minutes, floss. The trick is picking a version of it that holds up in a house where three people are trying to leave by 7:15.

Anchor brushing to something that already happens on autopilot. Right after breakfast dishes go in the sink. Right after pajamas go on. When it is attached to an existing habit, it stops being a negotiation.

For the lunchbox, the thing that matters is not sugar so much as how long it sits on the teeth. A cookie eaten in four minutes with lunch is easier on enamel than a bag of fruit chews picked at across an afternoon. Sticky and slow is the combination that causes trouble. Water with lunch instead of juice does more good than most parents expect.

And if your teenager is drinking an energy drink or a sports drink every day after practice, that is worth a conversation. Those are acidic on top of being sugary, and we see the wear pattern on enamel.

Getting it on the books around the school schedule

We are open Monday through Thursday from 8 in the morning until 5, with lunch from 1 to 2, and Fridays from 8 until 2. Early morning slots are the ones parents fight over in September, so if you want one before the bell, call sooner rather than later.

If you are bringing in a new patient, one piece of housekeeping saves everybody a headache: new patient paperwork needs to be submitted at least 24 hours before the appointment. The forms are on our website under New Patient Forms. Appointments without completed paperwork have to be rescheduled, and nobody enjoys that phone call, least of all us.

Two kids, one afternoon, back to back is completely normal here. Tell whoever answers the phone that you want them stacked and we will do our best to line them up so you are making one trip instead of two.

Why families keep coming back to Westside

Dr. Martin Lubes has been practicing in the Rochester area since 1987. That is long enough that he has cleaned the teeth of parents who now bring in their own kids. Our office sits at 2300 Buffalo Rd, Suite 800A, right across from The Home Depot, with parking that does not require a strategy.

We are a family practice in the real sense. Toddler first visits, teenagers in aligners, parents catching up on a crown they postponed, grandparents with dentures or implant restorations. One chart, one front desk, one set of people who know your family's history. That matters more than it sounds like it should, especially when something goes wrong on a Tuesday night.

Book the checkup before the season starts

If it has been more than six months, or if you cannot remember the last visit at all, that is your answer. Call us at (585) 247-1530 or schedule through our website, and we will find something that fits around practice, work, and the bus.

Ask about a custom mouthguard while you are on the phone. It takes one short appointment, and it is a lot easier to arrange in August than the week of the first game.