Looking After Your Children’s Teeth - Ages 3-10 Years
Good Habits
Our children copy everything from us, for good and bad! This applies to their attitude to their teeth as well; brush your teeth after meals, eat healthy foods and have regular check ups at the dentist and your children will also benefit.
Dummies/Pacifiers/Thumb sucking
If your child has been using a dummy/pacifier now is the time to stop. “Lose it”, “Give it to Santa”, you get the picture! Thumb sucking should also be discouraged. Dummies and thumb sucking will both interfere with the development of your child’s teeth and also their jaws.
Dental Decay is fought in 3 ways
Diet
Tooth brushing
Strengthening (or Prevention)
1.Diet
Sugar
Research shows that the more often you put food/drinks in your mouth, the more likely you are to need fillings. For good dental health, try to keep to 3 meals a day and limit snacking between meals as much as you can. At age 3 years most of our children will start école maternelle and this is where parents start to lose control over what the children eat. Therefore, it makes sense to be really careful over what we give our kids at home. Give a non-sweet cereal for breakfast (e.g. weetabix, porridge, rice krispies).
Watch the drinks you hand out! A senior children’s dentist in the UK advises giving your children only water or milk to drink, with fruit juice only once a week. Sweetened soda drinks like Coke, Sprite, Orangina are really bad for teeth, and be aware that the “sirops” which are popular in France are sugar syrups. This is the same as giving your child a drink of water and putting sugar cubes in it. When you are shopping for food/drinks look out for these, they are all sugars: glucose; lactose; fructose; sucrose and malt dextrin. The website www.eatwell.gov.uk is an excellent source of information about healthy eating.
Goûters (snack time)
Most école maternelle have a goûter in the morning and some in the afternoon as well. If your school has a collective one ( where the parents take turns to bring in something for the whole class) you would do well to check it. A lot of the goûters offered are sweet and/or chocolate, so if you are concerned, speak to the teacher about it. If you can’t persuade them to have healthy snacks, you could talk to the “parent d’élevè” or provide your own snack each day for your child. I have provided a list of “good” snacks at the end of this article.
2. Tooth Brushing
Parents should brush their children’s teeth for them until they are about 6. It is difficult for a younger child to manipulate the toothbrush and to understand where it needs to go. Brush after each meal (3 times a day) if possible, but definitely morning and night. After age 6 you could give your child a sugar-free chewing gum to chew after their school lunch. Research has shown that this can be helpful in reducing dental decay. You can use either a normal (manual) toothbrush or an electrical one; the technique for using an electrical one is different to that of a normal toothbrush. With an electrical one you should hold the toothbrush against each surface of the tooth and count to five before moving on to the next surface( i.e. biting surface = 5, cheek side= five and tongue side = 5), then do the next tooth along. Oral B has a good explanation on their website www.oralb.com
3.Strengthening (Prevention)*
Using fluoride toothpaste is very important, up to age 6/7 use a children’s toothpaste which has a lower level of fluoride in it than adult ones. After age 6/7 you should use adult toothpaste. Ask your children to brush after each meal if possible (I know school lunch time is difficult) and use a fluoride mouth wash (Colgate Plax, Elmex).
Prevention at the Dentists’
Regular 6 monthly check –ups. It is much better for your children if they go to the dentist for check ups and don’t need anything doing; this allows the child and the dentist to develop a friendly relationship. Your dentist will be able to spot any potential problems and deal with them at an early stage. A little hole in the tooth which is left untreated quickly becomes a large one! Dentists are not allowed to send out reminders so keep a note of when you are due for a check-up.
The following treatments should be available at your local dental surgery but you may need to request them.
Fissure Sealant. This is a clear plastic coating which fills in the crevices on the biting surface of the adult back teeth. It makes it more difficult for decay to start and it should be done as soon as the adult molar (back) teeth come through.
Topical Fluoride. This is a varnish which is applied by the dentist to a particular tooth that shows signs of early decay.
Early Orthodontic Treatment Some types of orthodontic problems are easily and quickly dealt with when the children are between 4 and 6 years of age. If you or your dentist believes your child might benefit from early treatment you will need to see a specialist children’s dentist as most orthodontists are reluctant to treat young children. Apparently, about 10% of all children could benefit from this early treatment. It might well save you years of orthodontic work when they are teenagers……. I have provided the names of the children’s’ dentists at the end of the article. (Odontologists Pediatres)
Healthy Snacks
A rule I have in my house is one piece of fruit and one more from this list with a bottle of plain water (not flavoured).
Cheese and breadsticks (available as portions)
Peanut butter sandwich
Raisins/apricots/prunes
Rice cakes and vache qui rit cheese
Plain/Dark chocolate – 70% cocoa solids has very little sugar
Cracottes, butter and marmite
Cheese portion (Baby Bel for instance)
Carrot sticks/celery sticks
Fruit compote with no added sugar (sans sucre ajouté)
Oatcakes (available from most supermarkets now)
With many thanks to Dr Frederic Vaysse (Dept of Children’s Dentistry, CHU Rangueil) for his help with this article.
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