A common source of parental concern is regarding the teething of their child. They are worried when the child will cut his first tooth. As is true with all types of development, there is no fixed or ideal time when the first tooth should erupt. In some children, it may erupt as early as 5 months, while in others, it may not erupt upto the age of 1 year. There is nothing wrong with your child if his tooth doesn’t come out by 1 year. Most of the parents think that their child is deficient in calcium and/or vitamin-D, which may be true, but only in a few cases. In majority of cases, it is just a normal variant and hence no intervention is required.
Parents also attribute a lot of things to teething. Every complaint at the time of teething is attributed to it. Thus if the child has fever, irritability, diarrhoea etc, the parents usually blame it on the teething process. While the child may be a bit irritable during the period due to discomfort; things like fever, vomiting etc. cannot be attributed to teething. It is true that during the teething phase, there is irritation on the gums of the child and to reduce it, he puts foreign objects in his mouth and chews on them. These foreign objects may be an indirect source of infection in the child and cause diarrhoea.
There are two types of teeth : deciduous or the milk teeth and the permanent teeth. There are 20 milk teeth and 32 permanent teeth. The milk teeth start erupting from the age of 5 months onwards and the first tooth to come is usually the lower central incisor.
A simple way to remember the eruption of milk teeth is that by 6 months there are 0 teeth; by 12 months, 6 teeth; by 18 months, 12 teeth; and by 24 months, 16 teeth. The last 4 teeth make their appearance by 2½-3 years.
The permanent teeth start erupting 2½ from the age of 6-7 years onwards. A little before that the milk teeth are shed. This process continues on and by the age of 12-13 years, the child has 28 teeth. The last 4 teeth, popularly known as the wisdom teeth, erupt at a variable age, in the late teens or early twenties.
