Dental Care Secrets

Children are expensive to raise at the best of times, but dental bills for cavities and then later on braces are any parent’s nightmare. While you feel you really couldn’t have avoided the fall from the bicycle or the appendectomy, dental bills hurt more because to some extent they are preventable.

Children as young as two years old are recommended to start seeing a dentist. Pediatric dentists are trained to handle little children and hence have child sized dental equipment, stickers and toys to keep them distracted while they check their teeth. However, even before your child turns two, you are supposed to clean his teeth. As soon as two teeth start touching one another, you should begin brushing. And before that, you can take a soft gauze like material to clean gums. However, use very little if any toothpaste and make sure it is the fluoride-free variety especially formulated for toddlers.

Also, do not put your child to bed with a bottle. The sucking reflex can lead to buck teeth and worse still, the milk remaining in your child’s mouth all night is a prefect breeding ground for cavities and the beginning of tooth aches.

Regular Visits

If you start taking your child to a dentist from an early age when there are no problems, they will not associate dental care with pain or discomfort. However, if you wait too long and the first time your son or daughter visits the dentist is for an uncomfortable procedure, it will be hard to drag him there again.

We all know that candy is bad for your teeth, but recent studies have shown that it is not how much candy you have, but actually how frequently you have it that can lead to dental problems. At Halloween for instance, it is better to let you kids eat their fill in one go rather than having them choose one piece every day. Of course, brushing soon after having the candy is also crucial in order to stay away from dental issues.

American kids have too much juice and that is not necessarily a good thing especially if they are having it from a bottle or sippy cup. While juice is of course preferred to soda, children should not have more than four to six ounces a day and that too should be 100 per cent fruit juice, not a fruity drink with loads of sugar. Try to have your child have the juice from a cup or use a straw as opposed to sucking on a bottle.