What was dental care like in your childhood ?

We weren't allowed sweets.
My sister was fat, and I had bad teeth.
Now we're both fat, and I still have bad teeth.

We had a very good dentist in the 1950s he took the time to explained everything he was going to do, that kind dentist made dental treatment bearable. Hence I have never feared going..
Our parents never let us see the demon school dentist.

I use to go yearly to the school dental clinic. I was lucky I did not need any fillings as a child. I still have all my own teeth at 83 years old. I do remember, I was not allowed many sweets.

Actually on thinking about it, we did eat a lot of sweets ....
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I was given bus fare each day for school but as mum and dad had already left for work, I just used to set of earlier and spend those pennies at the newsagent’s on the way! I must have thought a half hour walk was worth it in exchange for aniseed balls, spearmint chews, sherbet dabs and the like. Silly me. I suppose the exercise did me good though.
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Having read many of these comments I am surprised that many of us actually survived to adulthood, with or without our teeth! What absolute monsters some of our early dentists seem to have been!
My current dentist is lovely and very reassuring when I had a panic attack during an extraction shortly before last Christmas! She talked to me about my past experiences and really put me at ease; still don't like going though?

I used to use Gibbs toothpaste that was pink and in a tin. Can still remember going under the gas: the smell and fighting it. Don’t remember much about my childhood but unfortunately that’s one event that is still vivid.

Some of these stories bring back the horrible memories of the dentist in the 50s and 60s. I remember mum saying that if I didn’t go, she would let me be seen by the school dentist and they had quite a reputation! We brushed every night before bed and if we ran out of toothpaste, we had to use salt. When I went to the dentist (every 6 months) I was scared but if I cried, he would give me a slap on the leg. If I was good, I would be given a sweet from his sweetie jar. He called the huge drill an aeroplane (supposedly to make it seem fun?). I had four big molars pulled to make room. Oh yes I remember the smell of that black rubber mask. Also he pulled one of my eye teeth, telling us it was a baby tooth, then a few years later, another dentist had to x-ray as my adult eye tooth hadn’t come through. That’s when it was found that it was an adult tooth that he’d pulled. There had been a tiny brown bit showing and apparently a baby tooth wouldn’t have been worth saving. I’ll never forgive him for that. On that side of my mouth my teeth are badly twisted and look awful. I wish I could afford to have some cosmetic work done. I’m still really nervous when I go but my dentist now is so lovely and so patient. What a difference to those “old days”.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

The gritty toothpaste in a tin was eucryl. My dentist gassed himself, i think he must have been addicted to the gas but fell asleep with it on. It was faily common i believe.! I remember the big black rubber bung they put in your mouth to keep it open and the smell of the gas was nauseating.

Our dentist was called I. Pullum, honestly! I had a phobia about dentists ever since. The drill was very slow,( manual I think) and he once hit a nerve-I hit the roof! Like other people I had many unnecessary fillings because they were paid for per tooth. I remember having to have two back teeth out when I was only about six and having the horrible gas mask to knock me out. I have a lovely dentist now he is very gentle and doesn't do any unnecessary work. I took my granddaughter for her first check up and she was quite excited. Children today should never grow up being frightened of the dentist as many of our generation were (and still are).

I am 71 and still shake when in the chair. It was only when I came to France, in the late 70s, was I offered an injection before any drilling work commenced. I bit the dentist once when I was young and I miss many a birthday party because I refused to go on the six monthly check up. Every time I am near rubber I think I smell gas.
I have a dental appointment next week and I am not looking forward to it even though I know the dentist will be kind.

As I was reading this thread one of my teeth complete with filling has just dropped out ☹️ Appointment made for Thursday morning and although I like my dentist I’m dreading him telling me there’s nothing he can do as I have receding gums. Like most of you on here childhood memories of my dentist haunt me still. My teeth are full of fillings thanks to him resulting in many dental procedures and expensive trips to the dentist in adulthood.

I truly believe that in the fifties and sixties dentists filled every tooth they could as it must have been financially beneficial to them. I had my teeth straightened with braces at a hospital clinic, and was finally discharged from there aged fifteen, with perfect teeth. I then started to attend a local dentist and within a year or so every double tooth in my head was filled. My parents had good teeth with no fillings, my children don't have any fillings, so how was I in need of so much work - and all my contemporaries too?

I remember the school dentist, gas mask and children in the waiting area with blood all over them. Went to a private dentist, but he just filled every tooth In my head, totally unnecessary. We had a toothbrush but whole family shared the Gibbs tooth paste in a tub. How things have changed thank goodness

I remember when I was about seventeen and the dentist gave me the anaesthetic in my bottom left jaw. I was asked to wait outside. They called me in and discussed if it felt numb yet. All the time, I was thinking: 'This must be a new way of doing things!' He became very interested in my TOP tooth and said: ' Well, Miss xxxx ,shall we get started... I said: 'I am not Miss xxxx, I am sickofweddingcake!'
He had the wrong notes... I had to have another needle and start all over again.

Gwyneth

Terrifying. I can still remember the black mask being pushed over my face for an extraction and the dentist took out the wrong tooth!

The same happened to me! I was only eight and I can recall every excruciating second of the two extractions as I could only have had a very low dose of gas that hadn’t knocked me out completely.

Similar story here. We did have toothpaste, Gibbs Dentifrice in a tin, shared by the whole family, yuk,
We had a school dentist too but were also taken by my mother. At the age of twelve I think, I had to have a whole lot of milk teeth removed as my second teeth were growing over the top. I had terrible crooked teeth for a while but they sorted themselves out. Still got them all, including wisdom teeth but like others they’ve been unnecessarily filled during my childhood and teenage years according to my dentist.

I was young just at the end of the era when people where given the money for a set of false teeth for their 21st birthday. I believe when sugar rationing ended the nation went mad eating the stuff like their life depended on it hence the terrible dental health in the 50s and early 60s. This of course resulted in fillings. I qualified as a dental surgery assistant in mid 60s and Dentists were certainly not paid to drill, fill or extract. In those days we were lucky in that there were little charges if any, for crowns, root fillings, still regarded as complicated work. I worked in NHS hospitals and practices. One surgery I worked in even carried out a couple of implants and I met one patient 22 years later whose implant was still holding strong. Society played a large part in the need for fillings; those in the dental profession nowadays would probably be of the same mind with regard to all the sugary drinks and junk food consumed by young folk today.

To be fair to my mother (and I have always blamed her for allowing that dentist to do this to me and for neglect) she was a country girl from Southern Ireland and if a doctor or dentist said 'do it' she did it I think many of her generation were the same.
I read Keith Richards' autobiography. He had a nice childhood but that he felt he had been experimented on by ex military dentists just after the war.

Dentists are so much more gentle today! Mine is still trying to repair the damage done by all these awful metal fillings from childhood! Course we ate quite a lot of sweeties then too!

My grandmother used to tell me she got all her teeth out and dentures put in for her 21st birthday present in 1907! It was the fashion then!

And my father who was a GP working with a dentist in his surgery once a week, said that giving gas was the most dangerous thing he did as a doctor!

Changed days ?

Like so many others my dentist liked to drill and fill, and I ate a lot of sweets so probably needed most of the fillings. However for some reason it was decided that white fillings did not stay in properly and my bottom front teeth were filled with amalgam which looked worse than the small decayed areas the fillings had replaced. Have crowns now which have been great. Also in the late 60's the same dentist also treated my aunt who in her early 20's had a problem with one of her front teeth (next to the 2 in the middle). It was decided to remove it and she would have a dental plate which was fine but he also persuaded her to have the matching tooth out as well, even though there was nothing wrong with it because it meant the dental plate would fit better. When I told my lovely young dentist this last year she was equally incredulous and horrified.

I still hate going to the dentist

Also l think we can award poor Kate1949 and Viridian the dubious prize for the worst experiences in a very stiff competition.

Has anyone else read Littlejohn's Lost World? The author was born in the fifties and it is a lovely memoir of a childhood, which resonates with many of us born ten years or so either side of him. The chapter on his childhood dental visits are almost identical to the reports here. Apparently it was this chapter that had the most responses from readers.

I remember going to a dentist with my mum, where the machinery was run by huge elastic loops and the sound of the drill was terrifying. I can't remember have teeth filled, maybe it was so traumatic my mind has blocked it.

Childhood experience has made me a nervous patient, but the dentist I have now calms me and I trust him.