I have brought my son to multiple orthodontists for consultations. He's 12 years old. He has crowding in the upper jaw and mid-line shift to the right. The upper right also has a tooth not erupted and doesn't have space. He also appears to have a slight under-bite some cross-bite. A number of ortho said his under-bite is not skeletal but dental. The hard part is who to trust and how to make decisions as each one has different opinion and treatment plans. Some said extraction of 4 teeth to create room for crowding and said expansion could lead to gum and bone structure problems later in life. One proposed no extraction and to use RPE first to expand to a certain limit so as to avoid the gum/bone structure problem and then slenderize some teeth if more room is needed for that one tooth to erupt and come in. Another one proposed to use expander and head-gear to expand the upper jaw bone so that the profile would be better and the upper jaw was not properly grown. Only one proposed for treatment wise, no extractions are needed and only braces are needed to shape the arc and extractions can be done later if my son doesn't like the fuller smile. So based on so many distinct treatment plans, especially the non-extraction ones are vastly different. Is it feasible over the extraction routes? or would it really create gum/bone structure issues later as they said? Of course, I really hope a non-extraction treatment can work with just braces and not even the rapid palatal expander. Is it really possible with no side effects? For potential growth, my son hasn't started showing any sign of puberty growth yet, and he's still small compare to his age.