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What is orthodontic treatment?
Orthodontic treatment involves wearing a brace (fixed or removable) to improve the appearance and function of your child's teeth.
What would my child gain from treatment?
Benefits include improving their smile and appearance, correcting crowded or crooked teeth, correcting the bite so front and back teeth meet evenly, and reducing the risk of damage to prominent teeth.
At what age should treatment happen?
Generally, the best time is during childhood — we monitor jaw growth and developing teeth at every regular check-up, so we can recommend the right time to start if treatment is needed.
Who carries out orthodontics?
We believe orthodontic treatment should ideally be carried out by a specialist orthodontist.
Sorriso has its own in-house orthodontist for exactly this reason.
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How long will treatment take?
This depends on the severity of the problem — anywhere from a few months to two years, with most children treated within one to two years.
Is the result permanent?
Teeth can move back towards their original position without a retainer, so it's important to maintain retainer wear as advised, long-term.
Will it hurt?
Not typically — a little discomfort for a day or two after each adjustment is normal and manageable with recommended pain relief. New appliances can feel strange to begin with as the mouth adjusts.
Curious what a removable brace, fixed brace or clear aligner actually looks and feels like?
See our Procedure Options page for the full detail on each, plus how we care for your child's teeth throughout treatment and what happens with retainers afterwards.
For some children, treatment doesn't start with braces at all, but with what's known as a growth modification (or functional) appliance.
These are used during a child's natural growth spurts to help guide how the jaws develop relative to one another, at a stage when the growing jaw is still responsive to this kind of gentle guidance.
Our approach is to use these appliances thoughtfully, with the aim of encouraging more favourable jaw growth during this window — which can sometimes mean less crowding, a better bite relationship, and a reduced need for tooth extractions as part of orthodontic treatment later on.
This isn't always achievable in every case; every child's growth and jaw development is different, and a functional appliance won't remove the need for further orthodontic treatment altogether.
What it can do, in the right case, is make the path to a good result more straightforward.
We take an evidence-based view of these appliances: the clinical benefits of correcting a bite discrepancy early are well recognised, though the research on how much lasting influence they have on overall jaw growth is genuinely still debated within orthodontics.
We're happy to talk through what a functional appliance could realistically achieve for your child specifically, rather than promising more than the evidence supports.
Parents wanting to read more from an independent source may find the British Orthodontic Society (bos.org.uk) a useful, trustworthy place to start.
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