Child Taming: How to Manage Children in a Dental Practice

  • B. L. Chadwick &
  • M. T. Hasey
Surrey: Quintessence, 2003 price £28, pp 127 ISBN 1850970629 | ISBN: 1-850-97062-9

This is a difficult book to review as it is very much a curate's egg. The book's title is misleading as the OED defines taming as 'make tame, domesticate (bring an animal under human control), break in, humble, subdue.' I doubt that this is what the authors had in mind and a more empathetic title would have been more appropriate. In paediatric dentistry taming is not the aim of behaviour management. Rather the objective for a dentist faced with an uncooperative child is to identify why the child is difficult and then set out a strategy of psychological management and empathy to enable the child to cope with the situation and come to accept dentistry as a normal and routine way of life.

The book comprises some 11 chapters starting well with guidance on introducing children, the role of the dental team, some basic comments about fear and anxiety and parent training. These chapters are simply written and serve as a good, if brief, introduction. Chapter five should be the meat of the book as it deals with behaviour management techniques, and would be better if enlarged into a number of chapters. It covers some of the various psychological approaches to the behaviour management of a child in dentistry. Starting off simply with 'Tell, Show, Do' it continues into behaviour shaping, positive reinforcement, distraction, desensitisation and modelling. But each of these sections only skims the surface of the subject. In addition other behavioural techniques, which should be part of the spectrum of techniques a dentist needs to use, such as voice control, empathy, exclusion, verbal punishment (telling a child that their behaviour is not acceptable using a stern voice), etc. are not covered.

The authors state that their aim is to provide family dentists with the keys to successful management. As such it may well serve its purpose as long as it is understood that this book is but a very brief introduction to a complex subject. As a refresher text general dental practitioners will find it useful provided they are already familiar with much of the psychology that underlines the behaviour management of children. If the authors are considering a second edition then the book needs expanding to cover behavioural psychological techniques in full or restricting to either psychology or conscious sedation.