title: The dentist's use of normal developmental concepts in making the dental experience a developmentally enhancing one for the child.
abstract: In all of these dentist-child interactions, the dentist is informing the child that he or she has respect for and knowledge about the child's innate needs and the rules about how these innate needs can be gratified in the dentist's office. When this information is given to the child, the child develops trust in the dentist as a kind, caring, smart, and competent new adult in the child's life. The dentist becomes a new building block in the child's overall developmental growth, and the overall dental experience is deposited in the child's long-term memories as a developmentally enhancing one.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Gemelli
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003812:Dentist-Patient Relations; D006801:Humans; D002666:Psychology, Child