Oral care at home

For the past two weeks, you read what dentists had to say about when to begin oral health care for children, the types of care and dental services and procedures for children. Our final question to St. Louis area dentists is perhaps the most practical one: What can parents do at home to keep their children’s teeth healthy and strong?

Answering this question is Kim Butler Perry, DDS, dental director for Affinia Healthcare and associate vice president of Strategic Partnerships at A.T, Still University; Duane Dilworth, DDS, St. Louis County Department of Public Health; Kelli D. Dorsey, DDS, of Affinia Healthcare; Karen Richardson, DDS, chief dental director, Betty Jean Kerr People’s Health Centers; and Candace Wakefield, owner of Children’s Dental Zone!

What can parents do at home to keep their children’s teeth healthy and strong? 

Butler Perry: Parents should take their children to the dentist regularly, beginning with the eruption of the first tooth. Then, the dentist can recommend a specific program of brushing, flossing, and other treatments for parents to supervise and teach to their children. These home treatments, when added to regular dental visits and a balanced diet, will help give your child a lifetime of healthy habits.

Make sure your child has a balanced diet, including one serving each of: fruits and vegetables, breads and cereals, milk and dairy products, and meat fish and eggs. Limiting the servings of sugars and starches will also aid in protecting your child’s teeth from decay. You can also ask your pediatric dentist to help you select foods that protect your children’s

teeth.

Dilworth: Parents can brush their children’s teeth with a toothpaste approved by the American Dental Association every night, every morning and after meals.  Parents should bring their children to the dentist every six months for dental examinations, cleanings and fluoride treatments.

Dorsey: Parents can talk to their kids at home about brushing and make it fun for them. Parents can even teach by example and brush with their kids. Kids tend to mirror what they see.  It’s also important to not make kids scared about coming to the dentist. Let them know that their teeth are just as important as the rest of their body. The mouth can be the window to the rest of the body. 

Richardson:  Early establishment of a dental home is imperative in the life of a child, to assist parents with obtaining educational information to prevent cavities and to allow the dentist to intervene early in the detection and treatment of dental decay and other dental diseases. 

• Good oral hygiene practices, such as brushing twice a day and flossing daily is imperative for good dental health outcomes.

• Establishing regular routine dental checkups is very important. The recommendation is an average of two preventive dental visits per year.

• Creating healthy eating practices that excludes a diet of excessive carbohydrate exposure and beverages high in sugars and acid will assist in good dental health outcomes.

• Supervised use of over the counter fluoride rinses can also be beneficial in the prevention of cavities.

  Wakefield:    First of all, parents, please do not delay dental treat be for your child because you had a bad experience as a child or because you have an unhealthy fear about dentistry.

  Make an appointment to have your child seen by a board certified pediatric dentist at one year of age or 6 months after the first tooth erupts. Prevention is essential to healthy teeth. Children as well as adults should have dental checkups every six months for optimal oral health care. Early diagnosis of any disease or condition always renders the best long-term prognosis. 

  At home, brush your child’s teeth for them until age 7. Proper tooth brushing is indeed a physical skill and also requires that the child have a concept of time. Children less than [age] 7 do not have the manual dexterity it takes to adequately remove plaque from the surfaces of the teeth. Tooth brushing should occur for at least two minutes and should take place at least two times a day, morning and night. Once a day is not enough.

  Nighttime brushing is especially important, because all day long children have eaten breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks and have consumer sugary drinks. If they didn’t brush well in the morning, and have accumulated all of the debris from eating and drinking all day, then go to sleep, That is the perfect environment for bacteria to colonize and produce even more bacteria because at night the mouth is closed, warm and wet .

  It is very helpful to limit or avoid sugary beverages, especially, the -Aids/ades (Kool-Aid, Gatorade, Powerade, lemonade) and most importantly, apple juice and flavored milks.  Cavities form not because of candy per se, but because of a tooth that has been exposed to carbohydrates (bread, snack foods, drinks etc.) that produce bacteria that grow over time and literally eats a hole in a tooth, better known as a cavity.