Maintaining good dental hygiene is essential for your child’s health to prevent painful dental conditions and cavities. If you want to help your child grow with healthy, strong teeth and confident smiles, teach them basic oral hygiene while they’re young. As we get going, we’ll discuss simple ways to enhance 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 children. 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. Floss once daily

Flossing is vital to promoting healthy teeth for kids and even adults. 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 any time they want, doing it at night before they brush their teeth will ensure all the bacteria and food particles stuck between their teeth will all get removed.

2. Teach them the proper way of toothbrushing

There are several don’ts in tooth brushing that can hurt the teeth, and your child might do these if you do not teach them the appropriate 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. Visit the pediatric dentist routinely

Be consistent in keeping regular visits to the pediatric dentist twice a year. By keeping dental appointments consistent each year, you make it a routine, and your little one will make it a ritual and something to anticipate yearly. You may browse the web to discover more about the importance of routine dental visits.

The pediatric dental specialists will give you tailored guidance on enhancing your child’s oral health further and teach you how to look for cavities and developmental problems in their primary teeth to help you be proactive when something is wrong.

4. Monitor 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 often lack the skill to brush properly and might not know how to clean mouth crevices, so you must always be around to advise 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 tooth decay that has worsened and is causing intense pain? A dentist can address your condition with dental fillings. You may browse websites like wheatlandsaskatoon.ca/dental-fillings to learn more about the dental filling procedure.

5. Rinse after snacks and meals

While kids should only brush their teeth two times a day and not after every meal, they must rinse their mouths each time they eat. Rinsing stimulates saliva and washes away bacteria and leftover food particles. Producing saliva after eating is vital as it restores the teeth’ minerals and strengthens them. Chewing sugar-free gum after meals also helps with saliva production, strengthens the jaw, and balances the acid that causes tooth decay.