Dental Hygiene and Healthy Eating
Go Hand-in-Hand

Poor dietary habits can certainly compromise your child's dental hygiene, but poor dental hygiene can compromise your child's future ability to eat at all! Think about it—if we lose our teeth to decay, we lose our ability to chew certain foods. In general, the best we can do to ensure healthy teeth and gums for our kids is to help them form good dental hygiene attitudes and habits. Here are some ways to do that:

Get your child to a pediatric dentist when the first baby tooth emerges—usually between the ages of six months and one year. Regular visits should follow every six months to one year. Getting your baby used to having his mouth examined gently will help him be less anxious about seeing the dentist later on. These early dentist visits will also teach you, the parent, a few things about helping your child brush and about what products to use.

Help make brushing—with or without toothpaste—a daily habit. Understand that toothpaste is not essential in the brushing habit: 90% of the value in brushing is in the toothbrush, not the toothpaste. The main advantage of toothpaste is the fluoride, but as with all things, too much fluoride can be a bad thing. When kids under the age of six ingest too much fluoride—and they do ingest too much when we let them squeeze a huge glob of their favorite superhero toothpaste onto their brushes—it leads to flurosis, which is manifested as small, white flecks on the teeth.

Make sure your kids brush their teeth before bed. This is a simple thing, but believe it or not, one in three children are not brushing their teeth before bed. Ideally, children should brush their teeth at least twice a day, with the optimal times being before bed and after breakfast.

For infants and small children, just brush their teeth with water.
As with all aspects of raising a healthy eater, your good example is the best motivation for your small ones.

From Raising Healthy Eaters: 100 Tips for Parents by Henry Legere, M.D. Copyright © 2004.