Parents are always concerned about every little change in their child’s life. The first tooth tearing through the gums is quite painful for the kid, but little do they know the happiness and relief it brings to their parents.
A child’s dental health is usually on top of a parent’s mind. While the pain felt during the falling of milk teeth is nowhere close to what they feel during the teething process, this particular stage is still important. Let’s know more about the common concerns, problems, and complications associated with your kids losing their baby teeth.
The Tooth Timeline Of A Child
Every child has a different timeline when it comes to their teeth. The appearance of a tooth is formally called eruption. We refer to the first set of our children as milk teeth, but they are officially called deciduous teeth.
As the name clearly suggests, deciduous teeth fall off after the initial few years of a child’s life. They are 20 in number and all of them fall off eventually to make way for permanent adult teeth. Naturally, despite knowing this fact, we as parents can’t stop worrying about it, can we?
It is around the age of 6 months that your child starts teething and the first tooth appears. The process continues until about 3 years of age when your child has a complete set of 20 milk teeth. Three years from then, around the time when your child is 6 years old, your child would begin losing their deciduous teeth.
The process continues until the time your child is around 12 years old. Till the time they reach adulthood, they would have a complete set of 32 permanent adult teeth. Here’s a table to make you understand it clearly:
S.No. | Name of Teeth | Age of Eruption | Age of Losing |
| 1. | Lower central incisors | 6 to 10 months | 6 to 7 years |
| 2. | Upper central incisors | 8 to 12 months | 6 to 7 years |
| 3. | Upper lateral incisors | 9 to 13 months | 7 to 8 years |
| 4. | Lower lateral incisors | 10 to 16 months | 7 to 8 years |
| 5. | Upper first molars | 13 to 19 months | 9 to 11 years |
| 6. | Lower first molars | 14 to 18 months | 9 to 11 years |
| 7. | Upper canines | 16 to 22 months | 10 to 12 years |
| 8. | Lower canines | 17 to 23 months | 9 to 12 years |
| 9. | Lower second molars | 23 to 31 months | 10 to 12 years |
| 10. | Upper second molars | 25 to 33 months | 10 to 12 years |
| 11. | Third molars (wisdom teeth) [Not found in all people] | May or may not appear in the late teen years | Some people might need the intervention of a dentist for removal |
Why Do We Have Two Sets Of Teeth?
Why do the children need to lose their teeth in the first place? Can’t they just have the one permanent set? Well, the answer is no, they can’t; and it comes with a reasonable explanation.
The deciduous teeth act as placeholders. In simple terms, the milk teeth create space in the jaw for the permanent adult teeth to grow in the future. Teething is a painful process as it is. Now, imagine having no place in the jaw for a permanent tooth. You don’t want your child to go through that sort of excruciating pain.
When a permanent tooth is ready to erupt, the root of the milk tooth starts dissolving gradually until it disappears completely. This is the time when the baby tooth loosens and falls off eventually as it is now held by just the gum tissues. You would be quite surprised to note that most kids lose their teeth in the order of eruption.
Conclusion
Your child, like other children, will have their own timeline for losing their milk teeth. You can rest assured they would have a million-dollar smile ready by the time they become fully grown adults. You can’t do much during this process. However, you can teach your children to have proper dental hygiene to retain their flawless smiles.
Founder and a 36-year old mother of one who has gone through the usual problems of parenting herself and shares her own experiences through this blog. Ruby is a great writer who researches well before putting forth facts in the articles.