"At what age will you stop seeing my child?"

At some point when our patients reach high school age, parents will usually ask me at what age do I stop seeing them. It's usually assumed that a pediatric dentist only sees kids and so at some particular age we will stop and transfer them to a family or general dentist.

I will always tell parents that there is no age we stop. We leave it up to them. Most of our patients will stop coming to us sometime during their college years as they move out of their home and maybe even leave for another state. But we will continue seeing them as long as they want to see us! Many of our college aged patients still come in during the summer or at Christmas or spring breaks. We tell them that at some point it will be more convenient for them to transfer, especially if they have a dental need that we can't provide for like a root canal, crown, molar extractions, etc.

So to summarize, we say we see kids from birth through college, but we always leave it up to them when they want to leave. I will never "kick" them out!!