A pediatric dentist is a specialized dental doctor who focuses exclusively on the oral health of infants, children, and teenagers, which is why the role is often described as the pediatrician of dentistry. The specialty requires two to three years of residency training beyond dental school, all of it spent working with young patients. Below we cover what that training actually contains, what a pediatric dentist does day to day, how care changes from infancy through the teen years, and when a child is ready to move on to an adult practice.
What Is a Pediatric Dentist?
A pediatric dentist is a dentist who has completed additional specialty training and treats only infants, children, adolescents, and patients with special health care needs. The American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry defines the field as an age-defined specialty that provides both primary and comprehensive preventive and therapeutic oral health care for infants and children through adolescence, including those with special health care needs.
Age-defined is the phrase that matters most in that definition. Other dental specialties are defined by a procedure or a tissue, such as root canals or gums. Pediatric dentistry is defined by who the patient is, which means the specialty covers the full range of dental care for one population rather than one narrow service for everyone.
The specialty is also growing quickly. The American Dental Association’s Health Policy Institute reports that the number of pediatric dentists has risen 121% since 2001, the largest increase of any dental specialty over that period.
Why Do Children Need a Different Kind of Dentist?
Children need a different kind of dentist because a child’s mouth is developing rather than finished, and because a child’s ability to sit through treatment is different from an adult’s. Both halves of that sentence drive real clinical differences, not just decoration in the waiting room.
On the developmental side, a child has primary teeth that will be lost on a schedule, permanent teeth forming in the bone beneath them, and jaws that are still growing in three directions. A decision that looks simple in an adult, such as removing a damaged tooth, carries consequences in a child that unfold over the following decade. On the behavioral side, a four-year-old has no framework for what is about to happen and no way to consent to it in any meaningful sense. Managing that is a trained skill.
Those differences explain why the specialty exists at all. ADA workforce data shows that of the 205,088 professionally active dentists in the United States as of 2025, about 80% practice as general dentists and roughly 21.2% report working in an ADA-recognized specialty, so most dental care in this country is delivered by generalists. The table below sets out what changes when a child sees a specialist in pediatric dentistry instead.
| What Differs | Pediatric Dentist | General Dentist |
|---|---|---|
| Training after dental school | Two to three years of residency focused entirely on children | None required; optional continuing education |
| Patients treated | Infants through teenagers, plus patients with special health care needs | All ages, with adults making up most of the schedule |
| Instruments and equipment | Smaller tools sized for small mouths and primary teeth | Standard adult-sized instruments |
| Approach to a nervous patient | Formal behavior guidance techniques taught during residency | Varies by individual experience |
| Growth and development | Tracked at every visit as a core part of the exam | Addressed when a specific problem appears |
| Office environment | Built for children, with spaces and pacing designed to lower stress | Built for a general adult population |
Every row in that table traces back to the first one, so the training is the right place to start.
What Training Does a Pediatric Dentist Complete?
A pediatric dentist completes four years of dental school to earn a DDS or DMD, then two to three additional years of residency training devoted entirely to treating children. DDS stands for Doctor of Dental Surgery and DMD stands for Doctor of Dental Medicine. The two degrees cover the same curriculum and differ only in what the granting school chose to call it.
Dental school itself follows an undergraduate degree, so the full path runs roughly ten to eleven years of education past high school. The residency is what separates a pediatric dentist from a general dentist, and it is the part almost nobody explains.
What Happens During the Extra Residency Years?
During the extra residency years, a pediatric dentist works almost exclusively with children while training in behavior guidance, growth and development, sedation, hospital dentistry, dental trauma, and care for patients with special health care needs. Working with children through every stage is what makes the difference clinically, because a four-year-old’s jaw behaves differently from a fourteen-year-old’s, and that difference changes which teeth can be saved, which need to come out, and what the space left behind will do.
The full path looks like this:
- Undergraduate degree. Four years, usually with a heavy science load in biology and chemistry.
- Dental school. Four years ending in a DDS or DMD, covering general dentistry across all ages.
- Residency in behavior guidance. Learning structured techniques for helping a child accept treatment without force or fear.
- Residency in growth and development. Studying how jaws grow, how teeth erupt, and how early decisions shape later ones.
- Residency in sedation and hospital dentistry. Training in pain and anxiety management, including care delivered in an operating room when a child cannot be treated in a chair.
- Residency in special health care needs and trauma. Treating children with medical, developmental, and behavioral conditions, and managing injured teeth in developing mouths.
Residency programs sit in hospitals and dental schools rather than private offices, which is why so many pediatric dentists train alongside pediatricians, anesthesiologists, and oral surgeons. That cross-training is the reason a pediatric dentist is comfortable with a medically complex child that a general practice would refer elsewhere.
What Does Board Certified Mean for a Pediatric Dentist?
Board certified means a pediatric dentist has passed the examinations of the American Board of Pediatric Dentistry and earned the title of Diplomate, which is a credential beyond simply finishing residency. Completing a residency makes someone a pediatric dentist. Board certification is a separate, voluntary step that requires passing written and oral examinations judged by other specialists.
Parents rarely hear the distinction explained, and it is worth knowing because the two things sound identical on a website. Every board-certified pediatric dentist completed a residency, but not every pediatric dentist who completed a residency went on to sit for the boards. Dr. Angie Cohen is board certified and a Diplomate of the American Board of Pediatric Dentistry, with her specialty training completed at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children in Philadelphia.
What Does a Pediatric Dentist Do?
A pediatric dentist provides preventive care, monitors growth and development, repairs damaged and decayed teeth, counsels families on habits, handles dental injuries, and cares for children who need extra support. The scope follows directly from the training, so the residency subjects turn into the service list.
Day to day, that work covers:
- Preventive care: routine cleanings, fluoride treatments, and dental sealants, which are thin protective coatings placed on the chewing surfaces of back teeth.
- Growth monitoring: tracking how baby teeth are shed and how permanent teeth arrive, and watching the bite as it develops.
- Restorative treatment: fillings, crowns sized for primary teeth, and pulp treatment, all of which fall under restorative care for children.
- Habit counseling: practical help with thumb sucking, prolonged pacifier use, and nail biting before those habits shape the developing bite.
- Infant oral health exams: risk assessment for decay in both the child and the parent, starting before most families expect it.
- Injury care: managing a chipped, displaced, or knocked-out tooth, which is what brings many families in for a dental emergency.
- Diagnosis of oral signs of other conditions: recognizing changes in the mouth linked to systemic health problems.
Preventive work makes up the largest share of that list by volume, and the reason is visible in the national numbers.
Why Is Prevention Such a Large Part of Pediatric Dentistry?
Prevention dominates pediatric dentistry because tooth decay remains the most common chronic disease of childhood, and because it is almost entirely preventable. The American Academy of Pediatrics puts the scale plainly, noting that early childhood dental caries is 5 times more common in children than asthma and 7 times more common than hay fever.
CDC data fills in the picture. About 46% of children aged 2 to 19 have had untreated or restored dental caries in one or more teeth. Prevalence climbs steeply with age, going from 21.4% among children aged 2 to 5, to 50.5% among those aged 6 to 11, to 53.8% among those aged 12 to 19. By age 15, roughly 60% of adolescents will have experienced tooth decay. Untreated decay in permanent teeth follows the same upward curve, affecting 6.1% of children aged 6 to 11, 14.5% of those aged 12 to 15, and 22.6% of those aged 16 to 19.
The consequences reach past the mouth. The CDC estimates that 51.7 million school hours are missed each year because of a dental problem or a dental visit. Access also varies sharply by household income, with untreated decay among children aged 6 to 9 reaching 24.7% in high and middle poverty households compared with 10.0% in low poverty households. Regular preventive care is what keeps a small problem from becoming a missed week of school.
Two preventive tools do most of the heavy lifting in a young mouth. Sealants close off the deep grooves in newly erupted molars where decay usually starts, and fluoride treatments strengthen enamel against the acid that produces cavities in the first place.
How Does a Pediatric Dentist Monitor a Child’s Growth?
A pediatric dentist monitors growth by tracking which teeth have erupted, which have been lost, how much room the arch has, and how the upper and lower teeth are meeting as the jaws develop. Tracking those four things at every visit builds a record that a single appointment could never produce.
The timeline gives the monitoring its structure. Children begin getting baby teeth during the first six months of life, and by age 6 or 7 they start losing that first set as permanent teeth push through. Each of those transitions is a checkpoint where something can go off course, whether a tooth arrives late, arrives in the wrong place, or never forms at all.
Bite development is tracked on the same schedule. The American Association of Orthodontists recommends an orthodontic screening by age 7, chosen because enough permanent teeth have arrived to reveal the pattern while the jaws are still growing and can be guided. Children who benefit from acting at that stage move into early orthodontics, though most children screened at 7 simply go on a monitoring schedule.
What Happens When a Child Needs Orthodontic Treatment?
When a child needs orthodontic treatment, they either get referred out to a separate orthodontic practice or treated in the same office, depending on how the practice is set up. Most pediatric dental offices screen and refer, since orthodontics is its own specialty with its own residency.
Some practices carry both specialties under one roof, and the practical difference for a family is continuity. The dentist who has watched a child’s teeth arrive since age one is the same team planning what happens to those teeth at twelve, with one set of records and one set of appointments. Our families in Yorktown Heights move between pediatric dentistry and orthodontic care without starting over somewhere new, which matters most for children who took a long time to get comfortable in the first place.
How Does a Pediatric Dentist Help an Anxious Child?
A pediatric dentist helps an anxious child through structured behavior guidance, which means explaining each step in plain language, showing the instrument before using it, and moving at a pace the child can tolerate. The approach has a name in the literature, tell-show-do, and it is taught formally during residency rather than picked up by instinct.
The stakes are higher than a difficult afternoon. A meta-analysis of dental anxiety in patients aged 3 to 18 found a prevalence of 23.9%, meaning close to one in four young patients arrives with some degree of fear. In a separate survey of 1,420 people, 16.4% of adults reported dental anxiety and 50.9% of those traced its onset to childhood. An early experience handled badly follows a person for decades, and an early experience handled well does the same in the other direction.
The office itself is part of the method rather than decoration. Spaces built for children, staff who use simple words, and a schedule that allows extra time for a first visit all reduce the number of unknowns a child is facing. Several members of our team pursued this specifically, including research focused on creating calming dental experiences for children with autism and ADHD, which reflects how much of specialty training is really about the person in the chair rather than the tooth.
What Does Special Health Care Needs Mean in Pediatric Dentistry?
Special health care needs in pediatric dentistry refers to patients whose medical, developmental, physical, or behavioral conditions require adaptations to ordinary dental care. The phrase appears in the AAPD’s own definition of the specialty and is rarely explained to the families it describes.
In practice it covers a wide range: children with autism or ADHD who need a modified environment and pacing, children with genetic or craniofacial conditions affecting how teeth form, children undergoing cancer treatment whose oral tissues need close monitoring, children with cardiac conditions requiring specific precautions before procedures, and children with physical differences that change how they can be positioned in a chair.
Training for this population is built into residency, which is why pediatric practices see patients that general offices refer out. Where a child cannot complete treatment in a chair even with full behavior support, sedation gives another route to getting necessary care finished safely.
At What Age Should a Child First See a Pediatric Dentist?
A child should first see a pediatric dentist by their first birthday, or within six months of the first tooth appearing, whichever comes first. That timing surprises most parents, since the child at that point has a handful of teeth and no complaints.
The reasoning is that a tooth becomes vulnerable to decay the moment it breaks through the gum, so the window for prevention opens with the first tooth rather than with the first problem. An early visit also gives a child several positive, painless appointments before any treatment is ever needed, which is the single best predictor of how the difficult visits go later. Our guidance on first see the dentist covers the timing in more detail.
Plenty of families arrive later than one, at two or three, and that is still a reasonable start rather than a failure. Knowing what to expect makes the appointment easier for everyone, which is what our first visit page walks through.
Should a 13-Year-Old See a Pediatric Dentist?
A 13-year-old should absolutely see a pediatric dentist, since the specialty covers patients through adolescence and the teen years bring their own set of dental issues. The word pediatric leads parents to picture toddlers, and the training covers a far wider age range than that.
Teens face problems younger children do not. Wisdom teeth begin forming and the space for them has to be assessed. Sports injuries peak in the teen years. Diet and independence change together, with teenagers controlling their own snacking and brushing for the first time. Untreated decay in permanent teeth is highest in this group, reaching 22.6% among 16 to 19 year olds. Orthodontic treatment usually happens in this window too. A dentist who has tracked all of that since infancy is better positioned than one meeting the patient fresh.
At What Age Should Kids Stop Seeing a Pediatric Dentist?
Most patients transition from a pediatric dentist between ages 18 and 21, though the right moment depends on the patient rather than a fixed birthday. No rule forces the change on a particular date.
Four signals usually indicate readiness. The permanent teeth are all in and the bite has settled. Wisdom teeth have been assessed and either removed or cleared. The patient manages their own appointments and questions without a parent in the room. And the patient has started to feel out of place in a waiting room built for younger children, which is often the signal that arrives first. When those line up, we help with the handoff and share records so nothing starts from zero.
Can a 20-Year-Old Go to a Pediatric Dentist?
A 20-year-old can go to a pediatric dentist, and many do, particularly patients with special health care needs who have an established relationship with a team that knows their history. For a typical 20-year-old with no complicating conditions, an adult practice usually fits better at that point. Neither choice is wrong.
Can a Pediatric Dentist Treat Adults?
A pediatric dentist is licensed to treat adults, since the underlying dental license covers all ages, but most choose not to and limit their practice to children. The exception is patients with special health care needs, who often continue with a pediatric practice well into adulthood because the training and the environment remain the better fit.
How Do You Choose a Pediatric Dentist?
Choose a pediatric dentist by confirming the specialty training, asking about board certification, checking which services are handled in house, and visiting the office before the first appointment. The first two are matters of fact that any practice will answer directly.
Beyond credentials, the fit matters. Ask how the team handles a child who refuses to open their mouth, since the answer reveals whether behavior guidance is a practiced method or an improvisation. Ask whether orthodontics, sedation, and emergency care happen in the same office or somewhere else, because that determines how many new places a nervous child has to adjust to over the years. And bring the child along for a look around before anything clinical happens, which turns the office into a familiar place rather than an unknown one. Families weighing specialty care against a general practice usually find the decision comes down to those practical details rather than the credentials on the wall.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is a Kids Dentist Called?
A kids dentist is called a pediatric dentist, and an older term for the same role is pedodontist. “Kids dentist” and “children’s dentist” are everyday descriptions rather than credentials, so a practice using those words may or may not have completed the specialty residency. The credential to look for is pediatric dentist.
What Is the Difference Between a Pediatric Dentist and a Family Dentist?
The difference is that a pediatric dentist treats only children and completed two to three years of residency in treating them, while a family dentist treats every age with no required specialty training in pediatrics. A family dentist can be an excellent choice for a healthy, comfortable older child. A pediatric dentist has the edge with infants, anxious children, and complex cases.
Do Pediatric Dentists Do Fillings?
Pediatric dentists do fillings routinely, using materials and instruments sized for primary teeth. Primary teeth have thinner enamel and larger nerve chambers relative to their size than permanent teeth, so the technique differs from filling an adult tooth even though the goal is the same.
Can a Pediatric Dentist Pull a Tooth?
A pediatric dentist can pull a tooth, and extractions are a standard part of pediatric practice. What follows the extraction matters as much as the procedure, since removing a primary tooth early can let neighboring teeth drift into the space a permanent tooth needs. That is why a space maintainer is often placed afterward.
Do Pediatric Dentists See Babies Before They Have Teeth?
Pediatric dentists do see babies before teeth arrive, usually for an infant oral health exam that includes risk assessment for the child and guidance for the parent. The visit covers gum care, feeding practices that affect decay risk, and what to expect as the first teeth break through.
Is Brushing Teeth 4 Times a Day Okay?
Brushing four times a day is fine for most children as long as the brushing stays gentle and uses a soft-bristled brush. Twice daily is the standard recommendation, and extra sessions after meals cause no harm. What does cause harm is scrubbing hard, which wears enamel and irritates the gum line over time.
What Should You Bring to a First Pediatric Dental Visit?
Bring your child’s medical history, a list of any medications, insurance information, and details of any past dental care. For a very young child, bringing a familiar comfort item helps more than most parents expect. Arriving a few minutes early gives everyone time to look around before the appointment starts.
The Bottom Line
A pediatric dentist is a dentist who spent two to three years after dental school learning to treat one group of patients: children, from the first tooth through the teen years, including those whose medical or developmental needs make ordinary dental care harder. That training shows up in small practical ways, such as instruments sized for small mouths, and in large ones, such as knowing how removing a single baby tooth changes what the jaw does over the next ten years. Care starts by the first birthday and continues until a young adult is ready to move on, usually somewhere between 18 and 21.
Choosing where your child’s dental care happens is worth a visit before anything clinical takes place. The team at Cohen Family Smiles cares for children and teens throughout Yorktown Heights and northern Westchester, and we are always glad to show a family around and answer questions with no appointment on the books. Give us a call at 914-245-2965 whenever you would like to come see the place.
