Children Behavior in Dentistry: The Role of Parental and Personal Factors

Objectives: Dental fear and anxiety could result in behavioral problems during dental treatment and it is the main barrier to receive dental care in children. The aim of this study was to evaluate the behavior of 3-6 -year old children in a dental visit and its association with some personal and parental factors.
Methods: This study was carried out on 3-6-year old children and their parents who referred to the Pediatric department, Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Gorgan, Iran. Children should not have the previous dental visit and also should not have the history of serious medical experience or hospitalization. After obtaining an informed consent from parents whose children were qualified in this study, they were asked to fill a questionnaire. The questionnaire had four parts: 1-Demographic and familial information 2-Questions about child's dental history 3-Questions for parental anxiety with Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS) 4-Questions about parental expectations of child behavior in the dental visit. children behavior during a dental treatment including Dental prophylaxis and fluoride therapy was recorded with Frankl scale. Chi-Square test was done for comparison between groups. The threshold for significance is set at p<0.05.
Results: The study group included 130 children and parents. 41.6% of children had negative and definitely negative behavior and 58.4% of them had positive and definitely positive behavior. Child’s age (P<0.001), father's education (P=0.033), child's awareness about his/her dental problems (P<0.001) and parental expectation about child behavior in dental visit (P=0.023) had the statistically significant association with child behavior. There was not any significant association between gender (P=0.95), mother’s education (P=0.521), child’s history of dental pain(P=0.91) and parental dental anxiety(P=0.257), and children behavior.
Conclusions: knowing the factors that affect children behavior in dentistry, enable the dentist to apply behavior management techniques effectively.