It’s hard being a busy mother who ensures that your kids are getting everything they need to be healthy and happy. You can feel like you’ve missed a trick early on in life when setting up good habits for them when they are older.
Oral hygiene is one of those things that can be difficult, especially if getting your child to brush their teeth when they are a toddler is an ordeal of the highest order. But are there any tricks that can help to encourage good oral hygiene that will benefit them, not just in childhood, but for the rest of their lives?
A Good Diet
This is priority number one. If your kids constantly drink fruit shoots and have sugary treats all the time, this is going to have a drastic impact on their teeth. As a result, they will end up going to the family dentist a lot more than you planned.
A good diet is all about the usual things, apart from the lack of sugar. It’s important to get your children to drink a decent amount of water, and not rely on juices. The big mistake that many parents make is that they think fruit juices are healthy, when in fact, they are loaded with sugar, especially in concentrated form.
Demystifying The Dentist
Ultimately, a lot of children are scared of going to the dentist, so if you can reduce this trauma early on in life, it means that it won’t be so stressful for them, and they won’t end up avoiding the dentist like the plague.
While they do their best for children in the dentist chair, sometimes the best approach is to discuss it in a bit more detail, so they know exactly what they’re going in for. It can be a very difficult thing to get right, but when it comes to checkups, it’s just about opening their mouth. If you need to reward this at the very start, then it’s a necessary evil.
Making Brushing Teeth Fun
Brushing teeth can be akin to pulling teeth from time to time- an absolute pain! But, by making the teeth brushing activity a bit more fun, either by singing songs, or getting your children to choose their own toothbrush supplies, it takes the stress or anxiety out of it for them. In addition to this, think about setting an example for them.
Because if you brush your teeth at a different time to them, it doesn’t give them any incentive to do it. So, by brushing your teeth with them, it will make the process a lot easier. Ultimately, it’s about associating the act of brushing teeth with something more positive, rather than it being something very difficult that they have to do.
It’s not easy, but encouraging good oral hygiene is something you should start as soon as possible. No child wants to go to the dentist to have fillings, so if you can do your best to encourage good oral hygiene habits early on, not only does this minimize trips to the dentist, but it’ll make your children healthier and happier as a result.
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