 Hello everybody Andrea here so I haven't done a video like this before I want to talk to you guys about what happens at a orthodontist appointment. So if your child has has braces, they'll be going into their orthodontist their dentist every three months maybe more often maybe every four months to get their braces adjusted, tightened to change the color of the elastic so those braces. Your child is going to have many appointments to get things adjusted so I have a couple pictures here just to kind of show you guys what happens at these appointments because quite often parents don't really know what's going on at these appointments if you're not in the room. And if you ask your child what happened today like what did they do with the dental office what did they do to your braces. They will have no idea so let me kind of help you guys a little bit so first I'll say a very basic appointment would be simply changing the color of the elastic so notice that these ones are purple on this photo here so these ones are purple that would be changing the color of the elastic. This here is what the elastics look like. So they come in many different colors, we would just simply take off one of these little circle things. We place it around because it does stretch a lot as you can tell, and then the colors have changed because that can be fun to change colors for Halloween Christmas Valentine's Day. It just helps to make braces a little more fun. Another thing that that they do is they do check for cavities every time. But the thing about braces is if your child has a cavity in between the teeth, they cannot fix it until the braces come off so it's very important to make sure that your child is brushing and cleaning in between the teeth with a water pick. They can use the floss but they won't be able to get in there properly it's going to be very very difficult. I highly recommend using a water pick because they can clean above the brackets, they can clean below the brackets. All of that fun stuff so just a quick recap i'm actually going to go to the second slide here, I want to show you guys i'm going to be naming off a couple things and I thought it made sense to show you guys what everything is. So what are the brackets so when I mentioned brackets I probably mentioned brackets and elastics the most so brackets is that actual metal piece that is bonded cemented on to the tooth that will hold the wire in place. The wire is what actually tightens the teeth so the wire is right here. B is the wire C is the brackets, the elastic is just kind of that color that I had just shown you guys there's different types of elastics to notice this elastic here. That is basically something that is used to tighten the teeth in a different way. I kind of talk about that a little bit more in another video but I just I just wanted to keep things simple today. You can also see these metal bands which you might notice on two teeth at the back, maybe just one. It depends on at what stage they are in for their orthodontic treatment. So what do they typically do at the braces appointment so like I said they will either change the color of the elastic very simple, but more than likely they're going to tighten the teeth. So what do they tighten the teeth. Do you see this wire here that I kind of mentioned before and this I'm showing you the wire here because you can see it a bit better the wire goes in between the brackets, a stiffer wire tightens the teeth more. There's pliers all kinds of things that the dentist will use or the hygienist to tighten the teeth. Tightening the teeth is good because that's how the teeth will start to look better. You know tightening them means things are going well, the teeth will become straighter sooner rather than later, but you can't just tighten them let's say today and then tighten them again tomorrow so this is why your child has many different treatments because these things take time. There is such a thing as having braces on for not long enough and moving the teeth too quickly. You do not want to do that because that can actually take away the bone support that's holding the teeth together. You don't want that once the bone is gone you can't bring the bone back so when we tell you it's going to be two or three years, sometimes more that your child has braces on it's because these things need to be moved slowly very very slowly to do a good job. But that's how they tighten the teeth is basically using different wires stiffer wires if it's a very pliable wire so very soft. They're just getting started with their treatment or they're just about to finish their treatment so we have many different wires after your child's tightening appointment they're going to be very very sore soft foods is the way to go. Talk to your dentist if they would recommend ibuprofen Tylenol anything like that because that can really help to alleviate the pain for your child because it does hurt to tighten the teeth but it must be done. Please let me know you guys if you have any questions I hope this helped and I'll talk to you guys in the next one.