” But I want colors!”

I must hear this statement at least daily from new patients on their first visit to our office.  As the option for Invisalign is presented, and the parents get excited about all the great benefits for them such as reduced number of appointments and no emergency visits, the entire conversation comes to a standstill when little Suzy says to mom or dad..”But I want colors!”

The colors Suzy is referring to are the colors placed on traditional metal braces. Those pink, orange, green or blue rubber bands that “accessorize” the silver brackets.

Typically the child who wants colors is in junior high and about 10 or 11 years old.

For sometime, we would never counter that request and often ended up giving patients the metal braces and “colors.”  However, it got to the point where we would only “prescribe” Invisalign to the patient and parent especially in those open bite cases as we felt it was truly the best option for the patient’s malocclusion.

Also many times, we had parents who only wanted Invisalign for their child and yet the child was adamant about those colors!

Finally, we came up with a very simple and effective solution that you can implement right away.

First, you counter the statement, ” but I want colors” with “I understand Suzy, those colors are cool, but we have something even better…would you like to know about it?”

Of course they are now “all ears” and we quickly explain that not only do we have something better, she can change her colors several times a day.  We let her know her friends will be stuck with their colors until their next orthodontic adjustment which could be 6 to 8 weeks with pink braces!

By now they are leaning forward with eyes wide open.  “What is it Dr Galante that would be better than colors?”

At that moment, the bags of colorful elastics are brought out and a bag is handed to the child and mom too. Inside are mutliple different colors of elastics.

We explain with a photo of a patient with orange elastics and aligners that these are worn with the aligners in place and can be changed several times a day.

So whatever color they feel at the moment, they have the ability to change the elastics.

This works perfectly well and has turned most potential braces cases into Invisalign cases with excitement from both the child and the parent too.

It is really simple and easy to implement and now you have a easy way around the statement, “But I want colors.” Remember…you have something even better!