Children ordinarily get twenty baby teeth. Here’s a chart of when they usually come in and when they usually fall out.
Lower front four baby teeth
Upper front four baby teeth
Canine baby teeth, upper and lower
First primary molars, behind the canines
Second primary molars
age 6-9 months
age 7-10 months
@ age 1 year
@ age 1 1/2 years
@ age 2 years
ages 6-7 years
ages 7-8 years
ages 10-12 years
ages 10-12 years
ages 10-12 years
The first permanent molars are often the first permanent teeth to erupt. But there are no teeth that have to fall out for these to come in. They come in around age 6 or 7 years, behind the second primary molars.
When your child has his or her regular dental visits, your dentist should check that the baby teeth are coming in on schedule and falling out on schedule. If you can see the permanent tooth already appearing in the mouth but the baby tooth hasn’t fallen out yet, it’s generally recommended to have that baby tooth extracted. Otherwise, the retained baby tooth could deflect the permanent tooth from its proper path of eruption. Read the case of one sixteen-year-old girl where this wasn’t done, and she ended up with both her permanent teeth and baby teeth still in her mouth.
This content was written by Dr. David Hall.