Kids love having chocolates, candies, and sweets. But as a parent, it is your responsibility to take care of the dental health of your children. Excessive consumption of sweets can lead to cavities, tooth decay, or gum diseases. To prevent these dental problems and maintain a healthy smile, you should educate your kids on healthy habits and ensure they receive paediatric dental care.
Here is how you can encourage your children to improve dental hygiene.
Let Your Children Select Their Toothbrush
Make teeth brushing a fun activity by choosing toothbrushes that can attract your children. You can take your child shopping, so they can pick the toothbrush with their favourite characters. It
will make the dental hygiene activity exciting for them and they will willingly brush their teeth every day.
Always choose smaller brushes with softer bristles for kids. It will protect their teeth and gums from any injury.
Pick the Right Flavours
Children’s mouths are sensitive, which is why certain flavours of toothpaste can produce a burning sensation. This will make teeth brushing a dreadful activity for your child. Always pick toothpaste with a mild flavour that does not cause any discomfort.
Toothpaste contains fluoride to strengthen teeth. Monitor your children while they are brushing teeth, so they do not end up swallowing it.
Promote Good Brushing Behaviour
Children learn from their parents. You should encourage good brushing behaviour so that your children can adopt healthy dental habits. Brush with your children early in the morning as well as before going to bed. Show them how they can clean their teeth in an effective way and guide them about good brushing techniques.
Dentists with experience in paediatric dental care will also recommend brushing teeth for at least two minutes. Make sure your child brushes their teeth for the recommended duration.
Sit Down While Brushing Teeth
Getting kids to stand still, even for a few minutes, is quite a challenge. Being a parent, you must know this already!
If your children keep moving around while brushing their teeth, they may end up inflicting an injury to their gums or teeth. Therefore, you should ask them to sit down on a stool or counter to control their movements. This way, they can easily brush their teeth in a safe manner.
Add Fruits and Vegetables to Diet
Aside from brushing teeth and flossing, it’s a must to have healthy foods, including fruits and vegetables to improve dental health. Add more fruits and green vegetables to the diet of your children so that their immune system can resist dental problems and they can stay healthy.
Make Teeth Brushing the Last Activity before Bedtime
Food items, if left on teeth overnight, can lead to tooth decay. Make sure your children brush their teeth just before going to bed. If they drink milk or enjoy any snacks before bedtime, ask them to clean their teeth afterwards to prevent cavities.
How to Teach Your Children Proper Oral Hygiene Habits
Although parents want their children to enjoy a healthy life ahead, they often neglect their dental health. However, it is extremely important to guide children about oral hygiene, so as to protect them from dental problems in the long run.
Aside from regular dental check-ups, you should encourage children to adopt practices that reduce the risk of tooth decay and gum diseases.
Here are the do’s and don’ts of teaching your children good oral hygiene habits:
The Do’s of Oral Hygiene
You must book regular appointments with your dentist for kids dental care treatment. If your child is afraid of the clinic and the dental equipment, teach them how it can help them protect their teeth.
You can teach your children proper oral hygiene only if you are well-educated on the topic. So, get in touch with your dentist to learn more about the good and bad habits when it comes to kids dental care. This way, it will be easier for you to educate your child and instil healthy dental habits.
However, children get bored with long lectures. You need to make the experience fun for them. You can play a quiz game with your children by asking them the questions about oral health and awarding a prize if they correctly answer your questions.
Kids try to follow the actions of their parents in every aspect of life. So, become a good role model for your kids. Brush and floss your teeth along with your kids and encourage them to brush their teeth twice a day.
A healthy diet is extremely important to maintain your oral health. Prepare healthy meals at home that your children like. Educate them why it is not a good habit to consume too much of sweets and fast food.
The Don’ts of Oral Hygiene
It is extremely important to teach your kids about good oral hygiene practices, but do not overlook your own oral health. If you do not regularly clean your teeth, avoid visiting a dentist, or consume plenty of sweet foods, your kids are likely to follow in your footsteps.
Encourage your children to regularly visit a dentist for kids dental care, but refrain from instilling fears. Dentists are professionally trained to work with young children. They can easily make friends with them and convince your child about the next visit with a small gift or some lollies. However, if you try to take them forcefully to the dentist, they may throw a tantrum.
Parents usually feed their children with bottles and give them pacifiers to stop them from crying. Your children can quickly get addicted to them. But it’s not a good habit to use pacifiers once children start speaking, or else it may affect the alignment of their teeth. Also, thumb sucking is a common habit among young children and you should discourage it to maintain their oral health. Sunshine Dental Group provides dental treatment for kids. Feel free to contact us at kids’ dental care Melbourne to collect information about oral hygiene or book an appointment for your kid.
The Dangers of Thumb Sucking
Thumb sucking is an incredibly common behaviour in many children. Even though it is a perfectly normal activity that provides comfort to countless children, it can have adverse results in your child’s future teeth development.
Where the Behaviour Comes from and What It Means
As stated, thumb sucking is generally found to be an action centred around comfort and security. Many cases of thumb sucking start in-utero, and therefore many children develop a dependence on their dummy during infancy.
In most cases, children will naturally outgrow this process, and their family and friends begin to become their primary source of comfort outside of the thumb sucking. However, it does sometimes become an addictive habit that becomes a problem to the child’s dental health in the long term.
Before the ages of 5 or 6, thumb-sucking is not any cause for concern. Yet after the age of 6 is when adult teeth start to develop, grow out, and replace the child’s teeth. During this dental maturing, thumb sucking can have negative effects on the growth of the child’s teeth.
A number of dental issues can arise as a result of thumb sucking. Some common issues that develop with children’s teeth due to compulsive and persistent thumb sucking include a “bucky” appearance, where the two front teeth are pulled forward, appearing larger or more accentuated. They can also develop an “open bite” where the front row of teeth is incapable of meeting when the jaw is closed (generally located around the incisors). Thumb sucking can also cause a “cross bite” where the side rows of teeth grow inwards towards the tongue rather than towards the cheek.
How to Prevent Thumb Sucking
There are a variety of remedies for thumb sucking, and most of them are low-cost. The simplest solution is to get your child to wear gloves, making thumb sucking a displeasing experience due to the flavour and/or texture of the glove. Another option is to paint your child’s thumb with a bitter tasting material that most pharmacies sell for this purpose.
Depending on the child’s age, when they go to school they may stop on their own accord to avoid social embarrassment. It may also be possible to reason with them based on their personality or temperament.
If none of these options work, an orthodontist can fix an apparatus to your child’s teeth to physically stop the act of thumb sucking. If this causes the child distress, however, it
may be beneficial to seek the help of a child psychologist to combat any possible metaphysical attributions to the habit.
If any physical issues arise because of the thumb sucking, consult your dentist or orthodontist.
Contact us today
If you are concerned about your child’s dental health, contact Sunshine Dental Group by calling (03) 9311 1056 to book an appointment at our clinic in Sunshine.
