Maintaining good dental hygiene is essential for your child’s health to prevent cavities and painful dental issues. If you want to help your child grow with healthy, strong teeth and confident smiles, teach them basic dental hygiene while they are young. As we get going, we’ll discuss simple ways to improve your child’s oral health and keep them away from common oral conditions.
How to Enhance Your Child’s Oral Hygiene
Parents always look for ways to offer the best care for their kids. This includes ensuring their child grows up with healthy smiles and general wellness. To help you achieve this, here are five pointers you can follow.
1. Rinse after snacks and meals
While kids should only brush their teeth two times a day and not after every meal, they must rinse their mouths each time they eat. Rinsing stimulates saliva and washes away bacteria and leftover food particles. Producing saliva after eating is essential as it restores the teeth’ minerals and strengthens them. Chewing sugar-free gum after meals also helps with saliva production, strengthens the jaw, and balances the acid that causes tooth decay.
2. Supervise them when they’re brushing
Knowing your children can brush their teeth themselves is good, but you should continue monitoring them until they’re seven years old. Kids usually lack the skill to brush properly and might not know how to clean mouth crevices, so you should always be around to instruct and monitor them while they brush their teeth. They must spend at least two minutes on tooth brushing to make sure they clean their mouth and teeth thoroughly.
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3. Visit the pediatric dentist regularly
Be consistent in keeping routine visits to the dental clinic. By keeping dental visits consistent every year, you make it a routine, and your child will make it a ritual and something to anticipate yearly.
The pediatric dental clinics will give you personalized advice on improving your child’s oral health further and teach you how to check for cavities and developmental problems in their primary teeth to help you be proactive when something is wrong.
4. Teach them the proper way of toothbrushing
There are several don’ts in tooth brushing that can damage the teeth, and your little one might do these if you don’t teach them the proper way to brush their teeth. Teach them to use gentle up and down motions and ensure they reach the gum line when they do. Make sure they:
- Brush the back, top, and front of the teeth
- Use short strokes
- Brush their tongue
- Spit out the toothpaste when done
5. Floss once daily
Flossing is crucial to promoting healthy teeth for kids and even adults. Flossing removes the food particles and plaque between the teeth and gums that the toothbrush can’t reach. Plaque buildup happens due to a lack of effective flossing and brushing, so make flossing a part of your child’s dental routine. While kids can choose to floss any time they want, doing it in the evening before they brush their teeth will ensure the bacteria and food debris stuck between their teeth all day will be removed.
