According to the most recent data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention we see an alarming trend. Occurrence of dental decay in the United States in children aged two to five years has escalated by 15.2%. The statistics also show an upsurge in untreated dental decay in the same age group. Since a child’s early caries experience is a forecaster of future caries experience, with such an increase in caries in young children, we have on our hands the beginning of a possible epidemic of dental caries.
Maybe you are asking the same question as many other parents usually do: “why can’t I just take my child to my own dentist?” A simple answer to that would be that children are not just small adults. Their bodies are poles apart from adult ones, and so are their teeth. Once bacteria get into a child’s tooth, they can multiply pretty quickly, seeping through the tooth and going out into to the bone and potentially causing dental infections that can, in extremely rare instances, even be fatal. A specialist paediatric dentist knows all about these differences, and also is more experienced in dealing with and managing treatment in children.
You can present dental hygiene as something fun and exciting by telling your child that the dentist will “tot up,” “clean,” and “take pictures” of his/her teeth. By allaying any fears about the exam and the cleaning in this way, your child will better understand and accept the setting. Avoid off-putting words such as “hurt,” “drill,” “pull,” and “shot.” Don’t say to your youngster things like “The dentist won’t hurt you”; instead, set their mind at rest by reminding that the dentist and staff will be gentle and friendly.
It is advisable that you don’t offer your child juice all the time, particularly the juice which comes in cartons. Most of them are not healthy. If your youngster must have juice, follow the 1-2-3 instruction: only one cup of juice a day, alongside two glasses of milk, in addition to three glasses of water. The finest snacks for a child from a dental point of view are fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, milk, yogurt, and cheese. Remember not to skin your child’s apples and other fruit, because the edible peels are where most of the nutrients are found. They also help to clean the teeth.
Children shouldn’t be left in charge of their own toothbrushing until they’re old enough to spit, as they need to spit out fluoridated toothpaste rather than swallowing it. Kid’s toothpastes can’t do much harm if swallowed, but the extra fluoride may cause some mottling on the teeth, and they have no nutritional value. When it comes to daily brushing, you should make sure your child brushes his or her teeth following breakfast, not beforehand, so they start the day with a clean mouth; and after the night-time tooth brushing, they should have nothing else to eat or drink except water.
Long-drawn-out pacifier use or thumb sucking can distort a child’s upper dental arch and instigate things like cross-bite and bulging teeth. Children should be got out of this habit by no later than five years old. At this point, if any impairment has been done to their bite by the sucking, dentist can usually reverse it without too much difficulty. But if they get passed the age of five and aren’t stopping, braces may be needed to correct it at some point later on.
Contact a dentist or dental hygienist at Water Brook Dental in Washington DC for a dental check-up and other dental needs. Water Brook Dental has two locations in Washington DC. The Columbia Heights location is very conveniently located to Downtown DC, Northeast DC, Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, U-Street Corridor, Mount Pleasant and many other parts of Washington. The Eastern Ave NW location is conveniently located to Downtown Silver Spring, Takoma Park MD, Silver Spring MD, Colesville, and other parts of Maryland as well as Northern Virginia and other parts of Virginia.
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