7 Tips For Looking After Your Children’s Dental Health

Your children may have the sweetest tooth in the world since they consume sugar as much as they can. While they might enjoy eating those sweets, you’re not doing their health and their teeth any favors.  

As a parent, you always need to find ways to improve your child’s health. Apart from their physical health, you shouldn’t forget that their dental health is essential. This is because poor hygiene can lead to a more severe issue that affects their overall health.  

With that, listed below are some tips on how you can look after your children’s dental health:  

1. Visit The Dentist Regularly

The moment that your child first has their tooth, you should immediately go to a pediatric dentist so they can assess the growth of your child’s teeth. Along with this, you should also visit your pediatric dentist regularly so they can assess any issues with your child’s dental health and you’ll know the things you can do about it.  

Since a pediatric dentist is able to provide proper treatment to your child’s oral health, you can assure that they’d be growing up with those pearly whites that they’d be proud of.  

If you still don’t have a pediatric dentist, you can effortlessly search for the best ones online or visit https://familydentalhealth.com/.  

2. Create A Brushing Schedule

Ideally, everyone should brush their teeth twice a day–one in the morning and one right before bedtime. While it can be tiring to push your kids to brush their teeth twice a day, especially since some may find it boring, you may want to create a brushing schedule that they need to follow so they could have a great set of teeth.  

You can start by using a blank calendar and indicate a checklist about the child’s brushing times. Then, put a check once they’re done brushing. After a while, once they’re comfortable with the habit, you can allow them to check the boxes themselves. Eventually, it’ll become a part of their daily routine.

3. Limit Their Sugar Intake

No matter how much your child pushes you into having an ice cream every after dinner, you should be firm with your no’s and disallow them to have sweets every night.  

Instead, you can switch their usual dessert into something more nutritious. You could serve cold fruits or a fruit ice popsicle with no added sugar. In this way, your child could enjoy dessert without unnecessary sugar intake.

Moreover, it would also help if you avoid purchasing sweets so that your children wouldn’t see anything in the pantry. The more sweets that they see, the more they’ll want to eat them. This is the perfect time to switch to healthier alternatives, such as fruit chips and homemade biscuits.  

4. Encourage Them To Drink Plenty Of Water

Every mealtime, you should encourage your child to drink water as much as possible. While having an orange juice or mango shake sounds delicious, it doesn’t contribute much to their dental health. But don’t worry, you can still allow them to have great drinks. Just try to limit how much they take and ensure that they drink more water compared to juices. 

Every time your child consumes something extra sweet, you should ask them to drink a glass of water every time so the sweets would be flushed away from their mouth. Doing so may help prevent cavities from forming.  

5. Regularly Replace Their Toothbrush

A toothbrush should only last for a maximum of three months. Even if your children’s toothbrush looks amazing after three months, you should immediately replace it as the bristles may not work the way it’s intended. 

If you choose to allow the brush to stay in your sink for too long, it’ll encourage bacteria to grow on the bristles. Of course, you don’t want any bacteria to come inside your mouth as it could lead to more harmful diseases. Along with this, a fray bristle won’t be able to effectively brush away the plaque away from the teeth, causing cavities to your children’s teeth.  

If you notice that your children’s toothbrush is getting worse even before it hit the three-month mark, you should immediately replace it and don’t wait any longer.  

While replacing toothbrushes regularly can be expensive, it’ll provide significant benefits to your children’s dental health.  

6. Floss Once A Day

Once you notice that your children’s teeth are getting closer to one another, you should encourage them to floss at least once a day. You should be guiding your children on how they can effectively floss their teeth to avoid their gums from bleeding.

The process of learning how to floss on the first day can be tricky and scary for the kids. But if you show them how easy it is to do, they might want to follow your lead and might enjoy it.

7. Maximize Their Calcium Intake

Calcium is popular for keeping your bones healthy and strong. With that, it can keep their teeth strong, too.  

Apart from encouraging your child to drink a glass of milk before they go to bed, you can also serve foods that are high in calcium, such as broccoli, leafy green vegetables, and other dairy products. This way, they wouldn’t know that they’re having additional calcium while enjoying every mealtime.  

If you’re having trouble feeding your child with vegetables, you can search for other meal recipes that are high in calcium. Fortunately, there are plenty of recipes online that may or may not use vegetables. For instance, some would mask the vegetable with other ingredients in a way that your child wouldn’t notice.  

Taking care of your child’s dental health can be challenging, especially when they have trouble following your rules. You can allow them to have good dental health by limiting their sugar intake and encouraging them to drink as much water as they can. It’ll also be helpful if you can play a game out of brushing their teeth to make the activity more enjoyable that they’d never skip on having them.