If you’re like most parents, you want what’s best for your kids – and that includes a healthy smile. These days, it seems like everywhere you look you can find a doctor – or an online company – offering some form of orthodontic treatment. What they don’t tell you is that you can’t count on the same results from these various “providers”. It’s the doctors’ training and experience that makes the difference.

Not all dentists are orthodontists. An orthodontist is a specialist with intensive training after dental school focused on the complex biological system we will call your “bite”. Just as specialists in the medical field, such as an orthopedist or a dermatologist, deal with their specific part of the body, orthodontists limit their practice exclusively to orthodontic care.

Drs. Carlson, Hammer, and Dougherty are orthodontic specialists. That means they’ve been specially trained to see past your child’s six front teeth to see their bite in all three dimensions. They use their extensive knowledge to put together an individualized plan to create a beautiful, healthy and stable bite. They have been trained to visualize how your child’s smile should look at the end of treatment and then coordinate all of the variables that go into achieving that outcome.

Every October is Orthodontic Health Month and this year we wanted to take a moment to make sure you trust your orthodontic care to a specialist. Your child deserves the best—an awesome smile with stable, long-lasting results. The orthodontists you choose really do make the difference.