The other group of steps that your friendly dentist at Dentist Epping will recommend for preventing early childhood caries involve teeth cleaning.
For the healthy longevity of your child’s teeth and mouth, you want your child to grow up with a well-established and effective teeth-cleaning routine. Naturally one of the most persuasive ways is for you to model a consistent and healthy teeth-cleaning regime yourself, so your child sees you caring for your teeth day-in and day-out. In other words, practice what you preach – brush your own teeth twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste and floss them daily. And let your child see you doing this often enough that he or she knows it is your routine.
That’s all well and good – but how do you do that with a baby? Use a toothbrush on his or her gums? No – your Dentist Epping recommends that you wipe your baby’s gums with a soft water-damp cloth twice a day.
When your baby’s teeth start to appear, you can then start to use a wet soft child’s toothbrush, but without using any toothpaste. This will be easiest to manage if you lie your child in your lap or on a bed, so he or she is not trying to run around at the same time.
When your toddler reaches 18 months you can start using toothpaste – a pea-sized piece of low fluoride children’s toothpaste – and carry on like this until your child is about 6, when they can start using adult toothpaste. Throughout all this time, you will need to be heavily involved in this cleaning – or at least supervise it.
And flossing? Once your baby has two side-by-side teeth, you’ll also need to floss them, but the best way to find out how to do this is for your friendly Epping Dentist to show you.
Start bringing your baby to visit us at your Epping Dentist when the baby’s teeth start to erupt – or at least by the age of one-year. We can give your child a fun ride in a dental chair in your lap and check out their teeth and mouth to make sure everything is fine. If you’ve got any questions, we can answer them – and importantly, we can show you how to floss your baby’s teeth, so you know how to do it properly.
This routine will help your child avoid early childhood caries in the short-term and set your child up for a lifetime of happy smiles.
