Tips to Try!

“Take a good look at your toothbrush,” urged Marjorie Pay Hinckley, “and say, ‘Thank you for being, you’re a wonderful little gadget.’” http://www.ldschurchnewsarchive.com/articles/37689/Do-what-needs-to-be-done-BYU-graduates-told.html

Teeth are wonderful!  Ask anyone with dentures!  However, our family has seen our share of problems with teeth:  cavities, steel caps on baby teeth, and enamel wearing away.  There’s been fear of the dentist, bothersome appliances and braces, impacted molars, and even dry sockets!

But thankfully, we have made some adjustments along the way that have proved to be very helpful in preserving our pearly whites!  In fact, the last three or four times we have had check-ups, No One had cavities!  None!  The dentist didn’t even have any concerns!  I was so amazed and grateful!  Could I share with you some breakthroughs we’ve had about teeth?

1. Habits! We gave the baby a toothbrush as early as she could hold one.  When everyone else brushed, she got to “brush” too!  She loved it—she felt so big!  And tooth-brushing was established as a night time routine from almost Day One!  As the teeth started coming in, there was a little switch.  After baby “brushed” (chewed on the toothbrush), Mommy or Daddy had a turn too.  We brushed her teeth too, quickly and painlessly, but for sure. We’d explain to our kids about the “tooth bugs” that will eat holes in their teeth if we don’t brush them away!

If a child absolutely wouldn’t comply, we would reason and encourage, but not insist. (We didn’t want her to hate her toothbrush!)  So that child could brush her own that night. With one exception:   if that child ate something sugary that day!  Our kids knew early on that the consequence for eating sugar was that Mommy or Daddy helped brush!  Help with their brushing continued until somewhere around age 8, when they showed us how good they could brush on their own!

2. Bottles! We parents love bottles, but they sure coat the teeth, especially when they stay in baby’s mouth a long stretch into the night.  We learned to never give sugary liquids in a bottle!  And milk was not such a good idea at night either.  In fact, when it was time to wean the baby from a bottle at night, I simply decided to only offer water.  That did the trick:  it simply wasn’t worth waking up for just water!  So after one or two times, the baby didn’t anymore!

From the time my babies were about 2 months old, Mark’s mom would give them a drink of water from a tiny cup. It was a great service to me, for when they were ready to quit nursing, they went straight to all liquids from a cup!  No need for a bottle at all!

3. Juice! I was so pleased with our new Popsicle maker!  I filled it with juice—100% juice!  No sugary popsicles for my kids!  But at the very next checkup, the dentist was alarmed with my son’s eroding teeth.  In fact, he actually asked me if that child ate popsicles!  That solved that!  No more popsicles!  A good substitute snack, I found, was frozen grapes or bananas!

We learned to be careful with juice—even 100% juice.  Our dentist alerted me to the fact that my son’s enamel was wearing away right at a stretch of time when we were serving juice every day.  We didn’t want to give up the Vitamin C liquids that help prevent colds.  So we came up with the plan to swish with water after drinking juice.  The teeth were not left coated in juice and Problem solved!

4. Carrots! A great food, carrots are good for your teeth.  When a baby is teething and needs something to gnaw on, we learned to hand him a cold carrot.  It felt good on his swollen gums! (As soon as the teeth poke through, and he could actually bite little pieces off, the carrot had to be taken away of course!)

Occasionally, I would hear a child on a growth spurt call, “Mom, I already brushed my teeth, but I’m still hungry!”  “Go grab a carrot, “I’d tell her, “It doesn’t have any ‘tooth bugs!’”   Carrots and apples were my go-to snacks that didn’t cause plaque!

I learned there are wonderful enzymes in carrots!  Enzymes help digest food.  She learned that you can tell what foods have enzymes because they turn dark—or in effect, start to digest themselves.  If you set a peeled carrot or apple out, for example, it will start to darken. So after dessert, I like to offer carrots to finish off, thus helping her kids digest the sugary treats!  The carrots also seem to offset the effects of sugar on the kids, such as hyperactivity and reduced immunity tendency to sickness as well.

5. Floss! We have learned the value of flossing!  It just can’t be beat for removing plaque between the teeth!  Even and especially if one has braces!  (After being warned that teeth can be straight but totally wrecked if one does not care for one’s teeth while wearing braces, we have learned to require vigilance!)

Our kids are good at brushing, but not at flossing. We smartened up and made an unwritten rule at our house:  The cost of eating sugar is to floss.  We are adamant.  It is simply the price that the kids pay for eating a candy bar or a piece of cake:  that night they must floss.  If flossing is neglected, no sugar the next time.  But if they promise to floss, they can choose to eat desserts!

Sometimes, the kids think twice about eating that candy or cookie!  Flossing is not easy when you have to thread the floss through your braces each time, for example.  But it is firmly in place:

If we indulge, we floss.

And what delight to hear the dentist say, “No Cavities!”

Please comment below with your successes at family oral hygiene!