Dr. Rafya Sandhu made the following unsolicited statements directed towards and in front of our 11 year old daughter on her first visit for x-rays and cleaning. As you read these, you will understand why our daughter was shocked, extremely upset, and cried for quite some time.
We politely brought to Dr. Sandhu's attention that our daughter got scared by Dr. Sandhu's statements, and in future to discuss such issues separately with us, however, Dr. Sandhu did not feel any need to acknowledge our concern, and instead directed us to go to another practice. She stated that "this is how I talk to my patients and run my practice, and I will not change for anyone. If you don't like it, you can go to another dentist."
Statements made by Dr. Sandhu while our daughter sat in the dentist chair getting a cleaning:
"Her cross bite is alarming. She is going to have trouble eating because her teeth are not aligned. I can bet my life that she will need surgery if something isn't changed. The operation will be painful. This is going to keep getting worse and worse. How does she eat though? She may be managing but the cross bite will give her trouble. This underbite and cross bite will affect her smile. She is a girl so she has to pay attention to these things."
When we tried to collectively discuss this in the waiting room, she yelled that our child was the first ever to cry, that we were terrible parents, she felt sorry for our daughter, and then attempted to prod our daughter (who was still crying from what Dr. Sandhu had said earlier) to say that Dr. Sandhu was not mean to her, to which our daughter responded through her tears that "you were not mean to me. I was scared by what you said." Of course none of us had accused Dr. Sandhu of being mean and her inexplicable hysteria at this point made it impossible to engage in a mature exchange.
We are still trying to wrap our head around what happened. However, we feel compelled to write this while it's still fresh so other unsuspecting parents, and most importantly kids are not subject to unnecessarily harsh statements.
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