Dentists Get the Drill on Dealing With Children : Health: Lecturer gives conventioneers some tips on communication with fearful, uncooperative youngsters.

ANAHEIM —  More than 20 years ago, a fearful 5-year-old boy leaped from a dental chair in Ernest Evans’ Los Angeles office and ran out the door.

“I had to run all the way down the street to catch him,” Evans said.

Such chases may not be everyday occurrences for most dentists, but about 300 dental workers showed up for a lecture Sunday from a child behavior specialist on “Control of Child Behavior in the Dental Environment.”

Dr. Gregory Bodenhamer, a former Orange County probation officer speaking at the California Dental Assn. Spring Scientific Session at the Anaheim Convention Center, told the assembled dentists and oral hygienists that if they want to direct children’s behavior, they have to give them specific, consistent commands.

That can mean the difference between saying, “Honey, I’d like you to clean the bathroom”--making it seem as if the child actually has a choice--and, “Honey, clean the bathroom,” Bodenhamer said.

Just as important, he said, is to give the child specific orders. As an example, Bodenhamer told of one boy whose mother correctly told him to clean the bathroom but didn’t specify how. He used half a can of Comet cleanser to clean the bathtub and a whole bottle of Windex to clean the windows.

“If we don’t specify how much Comet or how much Windex, who gets to?” he said. “If we don’t set standards, whose standard are they going to use? Theirs.”

Just as important is to give such commands a time element, he said, such as “Do this now.” As an extreme case of what can happen, Bodenhamer pointed to the parents of a 22-year-old man who still lived at home.

The parents asked their son each Thursday for many years to take out the garbage. One time they left town, leaving their son in charge of the household. When they got back, they found that the garbage had piled up.

“They asked him, ‘Why didn’t you take out the garbage?’ ” Bodenhamer said. “He said, ‘You didn’t ask me.’ ”

What the parents should have done, Bodenhamer said, is tell him, “Take out the garbage every Thursday for the rest of your life.”

The same principles can be applied to making a child brush his teeth or go to the dentist, Bodenhamer said.

Charles Moore, 70, a dentist in Los Angeles, agreed that disciplined children make much better patients. But many times, he said, children on their first visit to the dentist are only 4 or 5 years old and their parents haven’t instilled any discipline in them yet.

The result, he said, can be a child who tries to pull a drill out of his mouth or who squirms so much that no work can be done. In those cases, Moore said, there is not much he can do other than talk to his patient.

“He has to be reassured you’re not going to execute him,” he said.