Background & Objectives:�Understanding children’s behavior and its affecting factors is the foundation for practicing dentistry for children effectively and, at the same time instilling a positive dental attitude into them. A number of studies have been done in this regard during the last three decades. This study is another attempt to find out proper strategies in order to control and optimize the diagnostic and trearment measures as well as to investigate the effect of mothers ’ personality characteristics on children ’ s behavior.

 Methods: The sample consisted of 104 randomly selected children (53 boys and 51 girls) at the age of 3 to 6 together with their mothers. The children had no previous dental experiences and no mental or physical disabilities entailing special care. Children’s behavior was assessed during three different dental visits according to Frankle ’ s Behavioral Rating Scale, in which four distinctive scales, namely absolutely negative, negative, positive and absolutely positive were precisely defined and scaled. The first visit was dental examination, the second was fluoride therapy and the last one was restorative dental treatment. Meanwhile, their mothers ’ personalities were determined through an interview conducted by a psychiatrist and based on DSMIV criteria and using General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) these personality characteristics were categorized in four groups: Normal, Depressed, Anxious and Obsessional.

 Results:�The findings revealed that 12.5% of children had no cooperation during 3 visits, most of whom were 3 to 4 years old. The difference was significant compared to 4-5 and 5-6 year old children (p<0.05). In addition, sex did not influence children ’ s behavior. This study showed that children of mothers with obsessional personality were the most cooperative ones during the 3 visits compared to mothers with other personality characteristics. This difference was statistically significant at the first visit, (p<0.05).

  Conclusion: Mother ’ s personality has the strongest effect on children’s behavior during the first dental visit.

Background & objectives: One of the difficulties of community of dentists, especially dentists dealing with children, is the pain and fear of dental treatment. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of systematic desensitization and distraction on reducing fear and pain in children with dental problems.

Methods: This is a quasi-experimental study designed with pretest-posttest multi groups according to control group. For this purpose, 45 children with dental problems referred to the dental clinic of Ardabil was selected and divided into three groups of 15 people: systematic desensitization (n=15), distraction (n=15) and control group (n=15). All of three groups answered to dental fears survey and numeric scale of pain as pre-test. Then, the therapeutic method of systematic desensitization and distraction was performed on two experimental groups. After completion of the treatments, three groups answered to dental fear survey and numeric scale of pain. Multivariate analysis of covariance was used for the analysis of the data.

Results: The results showed a significant difference in the score of post-test between three groups in pain (F=197.27; p<0.001) anddental fear (F=178.36; p<0.001). LSD post hoc test results showed that systematic desensitization method was more effective in reduction of pain and the distraction method was more affective in reduction of dental fear.

Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that psychological interventions of distracting and systematic desensitization can be used to reduce fear and pain at pediatric clinics.