Maintaining good oral hygiene is essential for your child’s health to prevent cavities and painful dental issues. If you want to help your child grow with strong, healthy 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 Improve Your Child’s Dental Hygiene
Parents always look for ways to provide the best care for their kids. This includes ensuring their child grows with healthy smiles and general well-being. To help you achieve this, here are five tips 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 should 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. Nibbling sugar-free gum after meals also helps with saliva production, strengthens the jaw, and balances the acid that causes dental cavities.
2. Teach them the proper way of toothbrushing
There are several don’ts in tooth brushing that can hurt the teeth, and your little one might do these if you don’t teach them the correct way to brush their teeth. Teach them to use gentle up and down movements 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
3. Supervise them when they’re brushing
Knowing your children can brush their teeth themselves is great, but you must continue monitoring them until they’re seven years old. Kids typically lack the skill to brush properly and might not know how to clean mouth crevices, so you must 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.
Do you have unattended tooth decay that has worsened and is causing severe pain? A dentist can address your condition with dental fillings in Saskatoon.
4. Visit the pediatric dentist regularly
Be consistent in maintaining regular visits to the Wheatland dental clinic. By keeping dental visits consistent each year, you make it a routine, and your child will make it a ritual and something to anticipate yearly.
The pediatric dentist will give you personalized recommendations 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. You may check this page to learn more about pediatric dentists.
5. Floss once daily
Flossing is crucial to promoting healthy teeth for kids and even grownups. Flossing removes the plaque and food particles between the gums and teeth that the toothbrush can’t reach. Plaque buildup occurs due to a lack of effective flossing and brushing, so make flossing a part of your child’s oral routine. While kids can choose to floss their teeth at any time they want, doing it in the evening before they brush their teeth will ensure the bacteria and food particles stuck between their teeth all day will get eliminated.
