I Thought I Knew What Frightened My Son at the Dentist

After three attempts to get my five-year-old's root canal treatment done, the part I kept thinking about was something he told me afterwards. What frightened him most was the smell of the dental medicine.

I'd known about the water. We'd talked about the instruments. I'd even taken him along to watch me having a filling. But the smell hadn't been at the centre of my understanding at all.

First, I tried to make it less unfamiliar

At the first appointment, Seth was frightened by how much water there was in his mouth. For the second visit, his mum took him instead. The treatment still wasn't completed.

In two conversations with him, I began to understand that pain wasn't the whole worry. There were strange tools and noises he couldn't make sense of. Before I could reassure him, I needed to listen to what he was actually frightened of.

Before the third visit, I needed a filling myself. I asked the dentist whether Seth could come along and watch. I would be the one in the chair. He could see what happened without having anything done to his own teeth.

The dentist kindly included him, explaining the tools while working on my filling. Some equipment sucked away saliva. Other tools used air or water. Those unfamiliar noises began to have names and purposes.

I hoped watching would give Seth a little more understanding before his own appointment. It was something practical I could do when I couldn't have the treatment for him.

He knew more. He was still frightened.

At the third visit, we needed two pauses.

The anaesthetic injection hurt, and Seth became frightened. About ten minutes later, when the treatment moved on to cleaning, he needed another stop. He cried a great deal.

I held his hand. The dentist was patient with him. Eventually, the treatment was completed.

All our preparation was there in the room with us. So were the pain and the fear.

Then Seth told me about the smell.

It made me think about how quickly I can settle on an explanation for what worries him. Sometimes I'm explaining the thing I've noticed before I've properly understood what he's experiencing.

Giving the experience a different shape

I'm Sam Ip, the creator of Ray Ray & Dodu, two fictional characters inspired by life with my boys. After the dental visits, I made a short animation in which Ray Ray sits in a dental chair, looking worried, with Dodu nearby.

Ray Ray & Dodu is also a free learning website I’m building for my boys and other families with children aged three to six. The stories lead into little activities exploring phonics, English words and simple sentences, alongside everyday knowledge about the world. I make them for a parent and child to try together, with time to listen, have a go and talk about what they notice.

It's a fictional story inspired by our experience, rather than a reconstruction of Seth's root canal treatment. The chair, the little instruments and the presence of someone beside you give us things we can look at together.

Making it gives me another way to return to the subject with him. We can pause on a picture instead of trying to describe everything from memory. I can ask which part looks unfamiliar, or whether there's something the picture doesn't show.

The smell is a good example. A film can show a chair or a mirror. It can't give me Seth's experience of that smell. There still has to be room for him to tell me something I haven't put into the story.

Something to try, and something to talk about

I also built little activities around the story. One introduces the word "dentist", with a short sentence, audio and a simple explanation: someone who helps care for our teeth.

In "Meet the suction tool", children hold a button or the tool to clear water droplets from a friendly tooth, listening as they watch. I wanted to bring something of our dentist's patient explanations into an activity we could explore together.

Giving a strange sound a name and a purpose is a small step. I hope it gives us a way to begin a conversation before another visit, while leaving room for a child to say that something still feels frightening.

I can't claim that watching a film or playing a game will remove a child's fear. Our own experience certainly wasn't a neat story in which a little preparation made everything easy.

Perhaps a child points to the chair. Perhaps a parent asks about a noise. Perhaps the useful answer is that something else entirely is worrying them.

For me, the real ending of this experience is still Seth's hand in mine, a dentist who kept being patient, and finding out what he'd been trying to cope with.

I'd like the stories I make afterwards to leave room for that kind of listening.

Sam Ip is a dad of two and the creator of Ray Ray & Dodu, a free family learning website. This essay is adapted from his previously published Medium article.

AI disclosure: The experiences and reflections are my own. I used AI to help structure and draft the English text, which I reviewed for accuracy and to ensure it reflected what I wanted to say. The fictional character artwork and animation were also created with AI assistance.