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Dental health for kids

Dental health and hygiene is necessary for everyone, however, perhaps not as necessary s for your children, whose teeth have just begun to emerge. the first teeth of your child begin to emerge around the third month and may continue to come out till the sixth month. The first teeth to come out are the bottom ones and these are followed by the upper teeth. Of course, the teething of a baby is based a lot on the genes that your child has. If there has been someone in the family who got their first teeth very late, the child will perhaps mirror this trend.



Once your child has got all of his/her teeth, dental health for kids takes the front seat. Typically, the best dental health practices for kids should be started even before the first tooth comes out. you can begin by simply wiping your child’s gums with a soft and damp cloth. Since your baby would have begun putting everything in its mouth by now, this is the easiest way to keep bacteria buildup from occurring inside the baby’s mouth. You can use a soft toothbrush, meant specifically for children, twice a day. Use the brush softly on the gums.

Most dental health kids activities focus on keeping the mouth clean since young children continue to put all kinds of things in their mouth. As the children grow older and can begin to brush on their own, specific dental health education for kids can be given to them.

For teaching dental health, kids have to be at least at the brushing stage. Once their mouth is full of milk teeth and they develop the fine motor abilities to handle a toothbrush, you can begin to ask them to brush their mouth twice a day. This will not be very easy and most likely you will have to supervise the child closely in order to make sure that the child brushes twice.

To make dental care fun for kids many dentists have come up with fun ways of educating children. There are fun and interactive websites on the internet which can help your children learn the value of maintaining good oral health. To learn dental care kids have to simply log in on these websites, play some fun games, and learn how brushing properly, twice a day can help prevent their teeth from decaying. As a parent, you can continue to reinforce this theory by taking up good oral hygiene habits yourself.

If you brush your teeth twice a day, your children are more likely to follow suit and start brushing themselves. Once the child gets to the school going age, you can replace the soft bristled toothbrush with a slightly harder one and can begin to use toothpastes which contain fluorides. Though fluorides are good for your child’s teeth, an excess of it may stain the child’s teeth brown. Therefore it is best to exercise caution when using fluorides.


If there are any dental problems kids tend to experience a lot of pain. For kids who do not brush their teeth properly, cavities and tooth decay is common. However, since they are still very young, it is the parents’ responsibility to make sure that the children have proper oral hygiene habits and are cleaning their mouth regularly so that the teeth are not compromised.

Cavities are the most common problem when it comes to the dental health of children. Cavities are small holes in the teeth which are formed when the bacteria begins to use sugar in the leftover food in the mouth to make acid. This acid slowly eats away the enamel of the teeth and then begins to corrode the inner teeth as well, exposing the nerves underneath and causing a lot of pain.

Submitted on January 16, 2014