I believe these kids truly remember the nasty dentist. I remember the Dr., the Nurse and my Mom holding me down while he pulled my tooth . That was about 49 years ago. At least my Mom was with me and it was only one tooth. I do remember my son being circumcised, strapped to a board like these kids were.. They kicked me out of the room because I freaked.

I'm so happy I didn't have to go through this. It was usually a dentist with an assistant or two, and four seats against the wall of the room for parents and/or siblings. They had a TV and always had us laughing. The smiles place says it's for low income family, we are a low income family and our dentist was and looked better than any other regular dentist. I can't believe the assistants! If I saw those things happen the first day and they say it's procedure I'll be the first one to resign. Just sad.

We live in Colorado and recently found our five year old son had to have eight cavities filled and a partial crown. Now I don't have a personal problem going to the dentist, but children's dentistry is rife with this kind of behavior, i.e. treating children like they are a sack of meat to be manhandled. One of the "holistic" places we were told to go to just outside of Denver in Westminster, has a very nice castle and children's artwork up, but they had us sign a form of consent. On reading it later we realized it said that we gave permission to have our son "Strapped to a papoose board" among other things.The Dentist herself (around 60) was kind of creepy and made no actual connection to our son. She wanted to force my son flat to examine his mouth. They wanted to give him something to calm him down and Nitrous Oxide (the mask terrified him) when he seemed in her mind "Difficult" she recommended General Anesthesia.General Anesthesia? Was she kidding? Strapping him down? What? Where were these people trained?We went on a hunt around Colorado and found similar requests. Parents couldn't be in the room. Nitrous Oxide. General Anesthesia. All recommended not to mention the BPA fillings which we couldn't even get those dentist to consider not using, our concern with it's toxicity (leading to cancer) and the estrogen which leads to sexual deformity in boys, yes those innocent plastic bottles your kids drink out have it.The default for Dentists is to say this: "I've worked with that before it's very difficult and will ...blah blah blah" Fill in the blank, it will fall out, chip, erode, whatever excuse they want to think up in the moment. An excuse because they didn't even know what we were talking about at first, but they have to continue to appear knowledgeable and god forbid they make an exception and try a different filling that is NON-TOXIC, i.e. leeching estrogen into little boys.The good news is that we found a dentist (not a children's specialist, avoid those) who uses something called Waterlase. He is here in Boulder and he and his staff were AMAZING.The waterlase is less painful than traditional drills and quieter. They used it on a setting of 4 which caused no pain and no discomfort although for the crown this was somewhat slower. I say pay the extra money to have a dentist take their time with your child's mouth. The upshot is that if they do this, you will save money on Nitrous Oxide ($200) and the Novacaine, not to mention General Anesthesia.SAY NO. To Papoose boards. Say NO to leaving your children alone with Dentists, EVER. And look for a dentist that is working with 21st Century technology like the Waterlase and with BPA free fillings (Ours special ordered it for us, charging us $50 for the rush fed-ex which is great but hopefully your dentist will use BPA free).Welcome to the 21st Century Dentists, please leave your medieval devices at the door.