Just schedule the jaw surgery already.

Anonymous wrote:I'm very mistrustful of orthodontists. One highly regarded one was pushing phase 1 treatment, and I went for a second opinion who said he didn't need phase 1 and may not even need phase 2. We are not looking for perfect teeth for our child with ASD - just to treat any necessary bite issues. Make sure that the provider is looking at the whole child.

OP needs to get more opinions. When we were getting braces for our child we got multiple opinions and most seemed like factories and money grabs. I wanted to get braces for myself since I had to go anyway and ended up choosing the dentist who said no to me for good reasons, explained why, and took the time to discuss all treatment options for my child and allowed me to ask as many questions as I wanted and helped us make the right choice. I originally pushed for one thing and the orthodontist said they'd do it but explained in the long run time wise its longer and harder. I think looking back, he was right.

Also, make sure your ortho is seeing your child every 4-5 weeks. Some only see kids every 8 weeks as they have too many patients and it just extends the time.

Unless his bite problem is severe, just skip the expander. Braces will get you close enough.

I totally hear you… the orthodontists and dentists just do NOT understand when you say something is impossible. It is so invalidating and frustrating.

I have no perfect ideas. My ASD child with a bad gag reflex did Invisalign. The ortho office trimmed down his alignments in the back so that he didn’t gag - this was true for the whole course of treatment. Also, first week of Invisalign was horrrrrrible but he did get used to it and do a decent job with it. We’re at the end of the treatment now. He did not need palate expansion.
But I will say that for his sister, who did need some (though not a ton) of palate expansion, we did 3M’s version of Invisalign, starting at age 8, per the orthodontist. It’s a firmer/thicker plastic compared to Invisalign, but really similar. And to the wearer, the experience was the same as Invisalign. You can ask about that.