Fear of the Dentist Is Passed On to Children from Their Parents

Kyle Houghtaling

Bio 101

Dr. Gazdik

Fall 2012

Blog Entry

            The article that I found most interesting was in the RSS feed “ScienceDaily:

Health & Medicine News”, and was titled “Fear of the Dentist Is Passed On to Children

from Their Parents”. This article spoke on the emotional transmission of dentist fear

amongst family members, especially that of parents to children. The article emphasized

the importance of how a parents reaction to the dentist effects how their child will feel

about the dentist. They proved this in a study of 183 children between the ages of 7 and

12 in Madrid that concluded fear levels amongst the father, mother, and children are

interlinked.  That study was published in the International Journal of Pediatric Dentistry.

However, the article also explains why the father is the largest factor in influencing his

and his wife’s children. The author, Lara Sacido, states that father was described as a

mediating variable and that children mainly pay attention to the father when determining

whether or not a situation is stressful. It was also stated that the mother’s reaction can be

influenced by the fathers reactions to the dentist. Sacido then stated the two most

important implications of the results that she obtained. One was the need to involve

mothers, and especially fathers, in dentist fear prevention campaigns. The other was to

make fathers attend the dentist and display no signs of fear or anxiety. It was obvious to

me from the beginning that a child’s response would be somewhat dependent on how

their parents react to the situation. However, I did not know that the father had a larger

influence than the mother. I had previously assumed that it would be the mother because

of the attachment that children get to their mothers when being raised, but I was wrong. I

also found this article more interesting than the rest simply because my mother is a

dentist. Whenever I visit my mom at work I always see the frightened faces of kids

waiting for their appointment with my mom to come. I never quite understood the fear on

their faces because this is something that I had never experienced. I believe this is

because I was born into it and found myself at the dentist much more often than a normal

kid due to my mothers profession. I also believe that this article has a great relevance to

society because of the understanding that it gives to parents and how they should act not

only at the dentist, but in other potential stressful environments. Their actions have been

proven to directly effect how their child will react to those same situations in the future. I

believe that this article can help educate parents around the world on how to react to

potentially stressful situations wen they are in the presence of their children.