The influence of parental behavior on the child’s adaptation to dental care

Abstract

The influence of parental anxiety on children produces aversive stimulus through negative personal reports, sometimes frightening, about traumatic dental treatments, fear produced by parents through verbal threats, in other words, the visit to the dentist cited as a threat, or as form of punishment. This assignment aims to understand, through bibliographical research and literature review, the influence of behavioral patterns of parents or guardians and it’s reflection on the accommodation and adaptation of the child to dental treatment. Thus, the specific objectives are: 1) to understand the influence of parental behavior on the infant patient in the face of dental care; 2) talk about the factors that can impact the levels of anxiety of the infant patient in the face of dental consultation or treatment. The literature review was made based on the search of scientific articles published in national and international journals, such as PubMed, Scielo, BVS, and bibliographic researches. The descriptors used as search parameters were anxiety, behavior, parental influence, pediatric dentistry and treatment.  The articles were selected through the analysis of the summaries, which had as main subject the factors associated with dental anxiety and dental care. It’s expected to understand the external factors that cause fear and anxiety behaviors in the children as a patient, including the family's own anxious behavior and the dysfunctional patterns that affects the evolution of dental treatment, as well as the techniques and methods of reception and accommodation used by professionals  pediatric dentistry, in order to enable the hypothesis for possible interventions.