oddler Tooth Tips – 6 Simple Ways to Protect Your Children’s Teeth
Adults are notoriously lapsed dental patients. For many adults, this laissez-faire attitude to oral health starts in childhood, through either bad habits forming early, or through a traumatic formative encounter with a dental practitioner.
The following six tips can help to give your child their best dental health – with knock-on benefits to the adults at home too.
Good Habits
The formation and maintenance of good habits provide a lifelong framework for healthy dental hygiene.
By encouraging good habits and rewarding regular brushing, you can ensure that your children have optimal dental health. If you needed any extra incentive, many providers offer kids free dental, which takes the economic hurdle out of ensuring their ongoing health and well-being.
Preventative Measures
It’s also important to make sure you introduce your children to proper dental services early on in life so that they can develop a natural and ongoing relationship with their dental provider. By doing this, you can help your child see the dentist as a routine visit to be enjoyed – rather than feared.
Part of the difficulty in doing this may be in overcoming your own fears and misgivings. Try to use positive language when describing the dental office. Speak of benefits of the visit, and tell your child matter-of-factly about the importance of maintaining good oral health.
Healthy Snacks
Young taste buds can be notoriously hard to please, and sometimes it feels like it’s easier to relent and give them the food they desire.
As with any healthy habits, children should be introduced to healthier food choices from a young age. Having readily available healthy snacks can be the difference between bi-annual or monthly visits to the dentist later in life.
Healthy choices for children include cheese and crackers, vegetable sticks, dips and plain yogurt. Combined with healthy brushing habits, these healthy choices can drastically reduce the chances your child will require more involved dental work both now and in the future.
On Guard
Protect your child’s teeth extends beyond good eating and hygiene habits. If your child is actively playing team sports, a mouthguard is an essential protective device which protects from trauma, tooth loss and damage.
Mouthguards can be purchased from pharmacies or provided and fitted by a dentist. In order to get your child used to any associated discomfort from wearing a mouthguard, it can be a good idea to slowly introduce and wear it in at home, while providing any required aftercare (ice cubes, mouthwash).
Water Water Water
Adequate water intake is essential for all living creatures, and young children are no different. Curb their access to sugary drinks – including fruit juices and cordials. Water is always the best option for health, and when it comes to dental protection, tap water has the added benefit of providing a source of fluoride.
Often beverages are labeled with ‘natural or ‘healthy’ while overlooking their sugar content. Many fruit juices contain up to a week’s recommended sugar intake. Preparing your own whole-fruit juices is a better choice, especially when combined with a 1:1 ratio of water.
Don’t Be A Dummy
Thumbsucking, dummies and other hand/device in mouth behaviors are best curbed before the development of adult teeth. Not only can these items cause the misformation of developing mouths, but they can also present a choking hazard.
Provide gentle reminders and reinforcement when you see these behaviors relapsing, and reassure your child that they no longer need the item (such as a dummy) as they’ve ‘grown up’. This change may require extra patience!
Protecting the teeth of your young children is easier than you think. By implementing smarter choices for their dietary and hygiene practices, you can instill in them a lifelong desire for good oral health – as well as a taste for healthy food and adequate water intake.