Occlusion is simply the clinical word dentists use for your child's bite.

In kid words

"Occlusion is just a big word dentists use for your bite, the way your top teeth and bottom teeth line up when you bite down." You will probably never need to say this word yourself, it is really just grown-up talk for something you already do at every meal. Every kid's teeth line up a little differently, and no two mouths match exactly.

The parent version

Occlusion is the clinical term dentists and orthodontists use for the way a child's top and bottom teeth line up, the same idea most families simply call the bite. The two words describe the same thing, and which one you hear often just depends on who is talking.

A child's occlusion is not fixed at any one visit. It keeps shifting through the years as teeth are lost and replaced and the jaws keep growing, which is exactly why it gets tracked over time instead of judged all at once. A wide range of how teeth line up counts as ordinary, not one single target to hit. When the fit does not quite follow the expected pattern, there is a related word for it, malocclusion, best treated as something to bring up at your child's next visit rather than a diagnosis to make from home. What your own child's occlusion looks like right now is always something to ask your pediatric dentist about.

Where you might hear it at our office

Occlusion is the word most likely to come up by name if a growth check ever turns into a longer conversation with our orthodontics team, since watching how a child's bite settles over time is essentially their whole focus. For most children, occlusion just keeps shifting naturally, checkup after checkup, without needing anything more than that steady watching.

Describing what you noticed, in your own words, is plenty to get the conversation started. If another word from a visit is still a mystery, the rest of the Kids' Dental Dictionary is right here.

Related words

Bite. Malocclusion. Crossbite.