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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Hayden dentist caters to kids

Tom Dance focuses on lifetime of dental health

Jacob Livingston Correspondent

This isn’t your parents’ dentist office.

At the new Hayden home of Dr. Dance, Dentistry for Kids, fighting tooth decay, preventing cavities and preparing for a lifetime of healthy dental checkups certainly remain the primary focuses.

However, as Tawnya Sweitzer recently discovered when her two children begged to come in early for their appointments, things have changed since her angst-filled childhood memories of sitting in the dentist chair.

Five-year-old Emily’s and 3-year-old Luke’s requests might have been as uncommon in parenting as “May we go to bed early? But, what kid wouldn’t want to hang out in a lobby with videogames, toys, a ceiling-circulating train set, a large flat-panel TV and an indoor play area complete with a miniature slide.

And when a patient’s name is called, kids can relax during the examination as each chair offers earphone jacks that link up with ceiling-mounted TVs, which played “Finding Nemo” on this particular weekday afternoon.

“Dentistry today is nothing like it used to be,” said Tawnya, while looking over her daughter’s shoulder in the lobby and watching as Emily weaved through digital cartoon traffic in the Gamecube videogame “Mario Kart: Double Dash!!”

“I think it’s great to have something close,”said Sweitzer. “Before this place, the closest kids dentist office was in Post Falls … This is nearby where we live, and it’s kid-oriented. My kids love coming here; we actually arrived 15 minutes early because they wanted to play.”

That’s encouraging news for owner and resident pediatric dentist Tom Dance. Since opening the business in October, the entire staff at Dentistry for Kids has shared the mindset of making the entire experience as comfortable as possible to ease kids into a lifetime of successful dental visits. “That’s the standard that we try to keep, to keep it fun,” Dance said.

That sense of childhood effervescence has stuck with the 33-year-old Seattle native since he decided on his profession at a young age. After reading and writing a book report on “Happy Teeth” in the second grade, Dance felt that dentistry was his calling. A graduate of the University of Washington’s dental school, he then specialized in pediatric dentistry at the Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

The Dance family, which includes wife Kim and their three children, Cameron, 6, Braden, 5, and 1-year-old Jane, moved to North Idaho in 2007, lured by the area’s combination of urban life next to the great outdoors

Dance, while working for another clinic for the first few months, and his wife had always wanted to open their own office. The Hayden area, lacking in any similar office structure, offered a great up-and-coming location in close proximity to a cluster of elementary schools. With a handful of ideas he gathered from other dental offices he worked at through the years, Dance and company built the business with one goal in mind: It’s all for the kids.

Reach correspondent Jacob Livingston by e-mail at jackliverpoole@yahoo.com.