Does anybody else have an autistic child with braces?

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Hi. My daughter is autistic. Her permanent teeth are coming and her milk teeth are turning twisted. I am planning to take her to an Orthodontic Specialist in Wilk and Wilk Orthodontics, Oakville. But I don't think she is a good candidate to get braces. Does anybody else have an autistic child with braces? I do not want her to have misaligned enamel all of her life. Please advise.

I probably should have gotten braces, but I made it very clear I'd rather have misaligned teeth than have stuff perpetually in my mouth. I have no idea how I could have coped with that - even wearing a mouthguard for karate kumite is agony for me.

I had braces from 3rd grade until the summer before 8th grade. My teeth were horrendously crooked plus I had a massive overbite (the corrective head gear was unpleasant and I was relieved when it was improved enough to use the little rubber bands that attached to my braces instead). They were obviously not fun but they were not unbearable. You can try to get her excited about being able to pick the colors for the rubber bands on the brackets - just never yellow because it'll look like plaque

This was before I was diagnosed with autism but I highly doubt that would've affected the decision to have me get braces.

I've had braces, as has my autistic daughter. The pain is worth the gain. You can avoid TMJ and other nasty surprises by getting them. The time will go fast.

I'm an aspie, but I didn't get mine until I was 18 because I needed oral surgery (impacted Canine). I had many fits from the pain, I'd ask a doctor to give her good painkillers for the tightening if this happens. Secondly Hypermobile joints is common in AS it seems. I wasn't able to wear rubber bands or coils because of my jaw being pulled out of place.

...I had braces/etc. as a child ~ I'm a little uncertain now , though , whether I had full-time braces , and if so , for how long ~ I had a retainer a lot .

Thank you all, for your suggestions.

I know someone autistic who wears braces; he says they're really annoying but they're worth it.

Having braces caused TMJ for me. Due to the orthodontist's decision to widen my palate, my jaw isn't completely aligned in the back and it clicks when I move it from side to side. This used to bother me tremendously, and still bothers me, but I've gotten used to it.

I had braces as a kid (5th thru 7th grade IIRC).

In the absence of clear and pressing medical necessity (not just an overbite and crooked or crowded teeth), I won't put my kids through it (and they are not autistic).

I am sure some of my experience had to do with a very bad orthodontist who, among other things, responded to patient complaints by berating the complainant. Some had to do with my autism. Some had to do with being taught not to complain.

I had severe pain with every tightening. Acetaminophen or ibuprofen didn't touch it-- as luck would have it, my mother was dying of cancer at the time and my grandma was able to slip me quarters of Percocets. Those helped.

Some of the hardware was so unbearable that it ultimately had to be discontinued. I remember, in particular, six miserable weeks with a palate expander before it fell out and I refused to allow it to be reinstalled.

I had severe damage to two molars from not being able to brush well enough to get food paripticles out from under the braces. I have lost one of them and will probably lose the other in the next ten years.

It would have been marginally worth all that for a nice smile.

But. Wearing the retainers to keep them in place caused so much discomfort that I could not sleep well at night, and issues with mouth breathing and tongue positioning restricting my airway when I did sleep. If you have to do braces, please insist on a type of retainer that allows the mouth to close fully when worn. I had plastic ones that fit over my teeth and only allowed my mouth to close about halfway. That led to the aforementioned issues as well as continual pain at my jaw joint.

I also had continual pain in my upper jaw and cheek bones. It was ascribed to chronic sinusitis, but when my retainer broke, after a few days it went away. I never got another retainer, my overbite and misaligned teeth came back, and I consider having to floss carefully, having a smile that looks like a stereotypical buck toothed hillbilly, and probably needed full dentures by my mid-60s to be an acceptable price to pay to live without the pain.

I do, however, believe that I had an atypically horrible experience.

I'm an aspie, but not diagnosed until I was an adult, but I had braces from the 7th grade to the end of 9th grade. The reason I had to get them is that my teeth were crooked and I had a huge overbite. I did have a headgear that I had to wear at night, but I was relieved when I was able to wear rubber bands instead. About a year after I got my braces off, I had to get my wisdom teeth surgically removed because a couple of them were impacted, which would have caused worse problems than ruining what the braces fixed. As a result of my having worn braces, I've got healthy teeth, and will be able to have them instead of dentures for the rest of my life. Flossing between them is easier than it would have been had I never had braces.

I had braces from grades 6 to 9. Had to get four teeth pulled and wear the rubber bands because of overcrowding and a very bad overbite. Now, I have not (yet?) been diagnosed with autism, but am quite sure I have it.

The braces hurt. A lot. And I have a high tolerance for pain. But every tightening had me in agony for the next week, and I constantly had sores in my mouth. The fact that I grind my teeth and chew on the insides of my cheeks didn't help. I had headaches, trouble sleeping, and I hate rubbery smells so having to wear rubber bands in my mouth seriously sucked. The retainer was even worse. I had one of those plastic invisible ones and it just felt so gross I abandoned wearing the thing a couple years early. So my teeth went back a bit and I still have a small overbite.

That said, I would do it again. Looking in the mirror and not seeing my messed up teeth (my overbite was so bad I couldn't close my mouth all the way) did a lot for my self image. And consider this... there I was - shy, withdrawn, and bad at expressing emotion - but something would get through to me enough that I would smile. Or laugh. Or make it so I had something I really wanted to say and would, even though it was scary. Only to get made fun of and called names because of my stupid, hated teeth. And then I got braces, and there was at least that one less hurtful thing in a mess of hurtful things when dealing with my peers, you know? It almost feels silly to write, because they're 'just teeth,' but braces really did change my life for the better in a major way.

My suggestion is to discuss this with your child. Is this something she wants, even knowing it will be difficult and potentially (very) painful? For me, I was already in pain because of the teasing, and because I hated how I looked. I know some people with autism (and without, for that matter) don't care much about their appearance, and that's totally fine. Also, there's some really beautiful women out there with imperfect teeth: Laetitia Casta's snaggletooth, Emma Stone's overbite, Rachel Weisz's are just a bit crooked. Madonna has her famous gap. These 'imperfections' don't take away from their beauty, in my opinion, and I find the fact that they opted out of the identical veneers sported by so many other celebrities really admirable. Give her all the information you can find, good and bad, and let her decide. And don't be pushy. If she says no, leave it alone. You can always bring it up again when she's older - she may or may not have a different view then.

Anyway, if you decide to go forward with it, do be willing to shop around for an ortho. I actually had a really great one when I was a kid - he had no idea I might have autism (no one did, my parents included) but he was gentle, patient, and willing to answer my million questions about 'how it works' and let me stare at those fascinating x-rays of my mouth for as long as I wanted

I have AS and I had braces from 17 or so to 19. I hated them but I wanted them and needed them because I looked terrible with that horrible overbite and huge front teeth so I called and set up the appointment and got them. Back then, in the early 80s, dentists weren't all nice and patient to kids, or at least none in my area were so I wasn't expecting a pleasant experience and I didn't have one.

I had to have four teeth pulled before I got them on and they tore up the inside of my cheeks and my tongue, but they were so worth it. They hurt like hell every time they tightened them and the retainer made me gag, and I barely ate those two years but at least I didn't look like a beaver anymore.

I'd say that if any kid needs them, and if that kid has the capacity to care about their appearance, then by all means do everything you can to get your kid to keep them on. If for some reason they truly cannot handle them, you can always have them removed, but get them put on and make your kid keep them on for a few weeks to see if they can get used to them before you give up. The self esteem you get from having your teeth look halfway normal is much greater and more important than the temporary pain and being driven crazy by the metal in your mouth. The good you get from them lasts a lifetime while the inconvenience and sheer torture of them only lasts a couple years, tops.

If your kid has huge sensory issues and just cannot deal with it, and they only have a sleight problem that's different, but if your kid has a bad problem with their teeth, braces can truly make life bearable, especially for people who had the overbite like I did, one so bad that I wouldn't want to be seen in public with how it was.