Correlation of Personality, Temperament, and Behavior of Children in the Dental Environment

A child's temperament, influenced by inborn traits and emotional regulation, can impact their dental behavior and caries risk. Parenting styles, such as authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, or neglectful, also play a significant role. Authoritative parenting tends to yield more favorable dental outcomes, while permissive parenting can lead to a higher prevalence of caries. Studying these interactions can help tailor dental interventions and address potential risks associated with caries development. Thus, the study aims to correlate parental personality, the child's temperament to dental caries, and child's behavior in a dental setting.

A cross-sectional study was conducted on 160 children in the age-group of 6-9 years. The children were selected based on the selection criteria. The children were asked to fill out the parental perception questionnaire (PPQ), and the parents were asked to fill out the emotionality, activity, sociability (EAS) questionnaire to assess the parenting style and child's temperamental status. Later, the child's behavior pattern was assessed using the Frankl behavior rating scale. The children were intraorally examined for the presence of caries using the decayed, extracted, filled teeth (deft) and decayed, missing, filled teeth (DMFT) index. All the data were tabulated and statistically analyzed.

In this study, a total of 160 children were assessed, including 84 boys (52.3%) and 76 girls (47.5%), with an average age of 7.8 years. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by Scheffe's post hoc test was performed to compare the temperamental status and parenting style with the behavior of the child in the dental office. The results were statistically significant with a p-value of 0.001. Pearson's correlation coefficient revealed a significant positive correlation between Temperament E scores and def scores in children with positive behavior (p-value = 0.004).

This study's findings suggest that a child's behavior in a dental office is influenced by the parent's personality, the child's temperament, and the dentist.

A child's capacity to handle dental visits and their overall oral health can be notably affected by the child's temperament and parenting style.

Thamilvanan S, Srinivasan D, Benedict CH, et al. Correlation of Personality, Temperament, and Behavior of Children in the Dental Environment. Int J Clin Pediatr Dent 2024;17(8):907-912.