Preventing Tooth Decay : Teaching Preschool Essay

Ensuring children know about the importance of keeping their teeth clean and healthy from an early age is equally important. We must ensure they know how and when to clean their teeth and by the time they are older, brushing their teeth twice a day should become part of their routine.

The area’s leading children’s dentist knows that healthy dental habits developed early in life are the key to a million-watt smile. To help your kids avoid cavities, teeth fillings, and a fear of the dentist, the professionals at Charlotte Pediatric Dentistry share a few tips to encourage kids to develop healthy dental habits.

Dental health is continuing to play a substantial role in the overall health for both adults and children. Dental health may affect several domains of child development and growth69. Good child dental health is essential for developing several physical and social functions such as feeding, breathing, speaking, smiling, and social adaptation. In the other hand, dental diseases can impact the children in many ways which may include pain, discomfort, embarrassment, challenged cognitive development, reduced self-esteem, and impairments of daily life activities70. In order to create a healthy future for Australian school children, we need to understand the epidemiology of child oral health and oral health behaviors 71. Establishing good oral health behaviors and attitudes at early age can create an opportunities to minimize the oral disease burden in the future 72, which may reduce the overwhelming cost of treating oral diseases that has been accounting for around 6.5% ($5.3 billion) of total health care expenditure 73. In addition, a good oral health has not being a privilege for all Australian school children; obvious differences exist across each state and territory 72. Such differences can be related to socio-economic disadvantage, residence in geographical locations that have restricted access to health and other services, and Indigenous or non-English

The websites I used for my research were Center for Disease Control and Prevention and World Health Organization. The World Health Organization defines Oral Health as “a state of being free from chronic mouth and facial pain, oral and throat cancer, oral sores, birth defects such as cleft lip and palate, periodontal (gum) disease, tooth decay and tooth loss, and other diseases and disorders that affect the oral cavity” (2015). It is necessary to brush our teeth twice a day for two minutes and floss daily. Since tooth decay has been one of the most common chronic disease among children in the United States, I found it very important to educate them that this is a preventable disease and what ways it can be

- Toddlers have little if any understanding of health, but do perform or request to do activities such as brushing their teeth (Edelman & Mandle, p. 458, 2010).

Because children are influenced by the family tradition and learn from their parents, it is important for parents to make sure that they are teaching proper oral care habits at a young age. The habits that children should learn at a young age are; keeping up with home dental care, receiving the dental care that people should, needing dental care but being enforced to go, brushing teeth as well as they should, being taught on how to control snacking between meals as well as they should, and being taught that dental care is indeed important. " Poor oral health has an impact upon children's health in general and dental caries can lead to a lack of appetite, problems with chewing, problems with sleeping and a decrease in school performance" (Abanto et al, 2011). Proper health education is somewhat

Making toothbrushing fun is the key to promoting good oral hygiene. Try one of these tips if your child is a little reluctant:

You’re really doing it – you’re raising a kid with good morals and manners, spirit and spunk, creativity and imagination. It’s fair that “good dental hygiene” isn’t always your primary focus. Really, it’s okay. Lowitz & Meier are here to help.

Despite the significant improvement of Australian children dental health over the years, there were significant proportions of children continuing to have caries problem that cannot be overlook. For example 7.3 per cent of 12-year-old children had a DIMF score of six or more in 1985, and 8.2 per cent had three or more teeth recorded as carious (D or I), which would result in uneven distribution of dental caries as well as highlighted the importance of identification of caries-susceptible children that could be targeted for specific preventive programs.

Home oral health care is another direct individual-level contributing factor to children’s oral health (Armfield, Mejia, & Jameson, 2013). Young children often do not have the dexterity to adequately remove plaque from all areas of the mouth (Schwatrz, 2013). Inadequate plaque removal, combined with a diet high in fermentable carbohydrates puts a child at greater risk for developing dental caries.

Come morning, many moms are faced with the challenge of brushing the teeth of a toddler. In theory, it may sound like a piece of cake but the reality, however, is very different. Many moms start their day with a lot yelling, fighting and tantrums all for the sake of oral hygiene.

“Early childhood caries (ECC) is on the rise among U.S. preschool-aged children, especially in preschoolers from low-income households.” (Chi, D.L., Tut, O.K., & Milgrom, 2014, p.1) The Xylitol Toothpaste Trial was conducted in four Head Start classrooms located on the Republic of the Marshall Islands on Majuro Atoll. The Washington Institutional Review Board granted the Ministry of Health approval to commence the trial as requested. The Ministry of Health worked with the children there that were from ages four to five enrolled in Head Start during the school year of the trial. During the initial census at the beginning of the school year there were 196 children who were enrolled and received a baseline

Here I learned the utmost importance of oral health promotion and the prevention of dental related diseases through patient education. I was also able to find my place in pediatric dentistry as I learned to work with children from various health and sociocultural backgrounds. The opportunity to exercise my skills while working with the pediatric patient population soon appeared: I became part of a pediatric dental team called All About Kids Pediatric Dentistry. There I began working as a dental assistant with pediatric dentists and dental anesthesiologists, and moved on to providing oral hygiene care. Pediatric dentistry has never felt so rewarding and the idea of considering this specialty remains a tangible

Early Childhood Caries is a common dental decay disease that affects children under five years of age. It is characterized as being any missing, filling, or decay in primary dentition because of dental caries. This paper shows the high prevalence statistics of Early Childhood Caries taken around the world. This disease is completely preventable but because of the caregivers lack of knowledge, it remains more common than asthma. This paper talks about the causes of Early Childhood Caries including Streptococcus mutans, improper feeding methods and how caregivers can prevent the causes from ever happening. It touches on vertical and horizontal transmission of Streptococcus mutans and the controversy of breastfeeding over bottle feeding. This

Dental Hygiene is very important to me and has been since I was a child, this has influenced my desire of becoming a pediatric dentist. In a personal interview i conducted with Dr.Bills she informed me of this, “Dental Hygiene is emphasized by all dentists, we want our patients to have elegant white teeth and pleasant breath”(Bills). I would like to teach children the importance of keeping their teeth brushed so that they will have a beautiful smile and healthy teeth. Pediatric Dentistry is a superb fit for me because I care about dental health and I want children to know the importance as well. It is never too early for children to learn how important dental hygiene is.