It's important to have healthy teeth, and if you're a parent, you should make sure that your child receives dental care right away. Cavities and other dental issues can be easily avoided if they are taken care of right away. If you choose to ignore your child's dental health, this could mean enormous dental bills when you can no longer ignore their dental problems.
Start Your Child Early
Start bringing your child to a dentist as early as two years old. Just as there are pediatric doctors for small children, there are pediatric dentists who specialize in taking care of young children's dental needs. Pediatric dentists know how to handle small children; their dental equipment are child sized, and they have things in their offices such as stickers, crayons and coloring books to distract the little patients as their teeth are being checked. But even if your child isn't quite old enough to take to a pediatric dentist, he should be receiving dental care -- from you. As soon as you see two teeth touch each other, you should start brushing your child's teeth. Prior to that, you can clean your child's gums using a soft cloth or gauze-like material. However, don't use toothpaste with fluoride, and if you need to use toothpaste to clean your child's gums and teeth, make sure you use one that is specially formulated for toddlers, and use only a small amount.
It's also not a good idea to give your child a bottle to suck on at bed time. You need to know that sucking leads to buck teeth. In addition, if you let your child sleep through the night with milk in his mouth, his mouth becomes a breeding ground for bacteria that can cause cavities and tooth aches.
Regular Trips to the Dentist
It's best that you start taking your child to the dentist before the onset of dental issues. This way he won't associate trips to the dentist with pain or discomfort. If you wait too long to take you child to the dentist, such as when he has a tooth ache or cavities, your child is likely going to fear going to the dentist later on because he will associate those visits with pain and discomfort.
Keep an Eye on What Your Child Eats and Drinks
You don't need an expert to tell you that candy is bad for the teeth. However, recent studies show that dental problems are actually caused by the frequency of eating candy and not by how much candy you eat. For example, at Halloween, it's better to let your child eat the candies he wants to it in one go instead of having him eat one piece of candy every day. That's not to say you should let your child eat a whole bag of candy in one sitting, though. It's vital that you help your child develop the habit of brushing his teeth after eating candy.
Then there are the juice drinks, which have been found to cause a lot of dental problems. While juice drinks are preferable to sodas, make sure that your child does not drink more than 6 ounces of 100% fruit juice each day. If your child is still bottle fed, avoid giving him juice in a bottle. You can teach him to drink his juice from a cup or to use a straw.
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