Teaching Your Children Healthy Teeth Care

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It is very important for you to keep your teeth clean. Research is beginning to show a link between poor oral care and strokes and heart health. This is incredibly scary when you realize that how you care for your teeth can have more ramifications than just a cavity or root canal. This is why it is so important to teach your children about proper and healthy habits in regards to their teeth.

Teaching them about the length of time they should be brushing is one of the first things you can do. Two minutes is what dentists are recommending. This may seem like a long amount of time for a child, who left on their own will come up quite short. Getting an egg timer is a good start to getting them brushing a little longer. There are two minute timers that stick right to your bathroom mirror for just this reason.

I also know that my children are horrible about brushing their teeth using a regular toothbrush. The kids were not getting the plaque off of their teeth well enough. We decided to go with a mechanical toothbrush to help aid in this. Not only did it help the kids teeth, but they were super excited to use an electronic toothbrush.

Getting each of our kids their own toothpaste was another trick we used. You can get toothpaste in very odd flavors such as strawberries that is fluoride free for very young kids, and bubble gum fluoride toothpaste when they are older. You can use the same trick for mouthwash. It seems like the stranger the flavor and color, the more they love it. Once your children are older, it becomes very important to push flossing or using a water pick. Kids sometimes seem to like using a water pick because they can play with the water as well.

Getting into a good routine with your child and monitoring them is ultimately the best way to promote good hygiene until they are old enough to understand.