Teaching Your Children a Healthy Smile Regimen

Making sure your child maintains good oral health starts with you.

It’s never too early to start teaching your children about the importance of dental care. By teaching them early on, they are more likely to keep up with their oral care routine, ensuring that cavities and other issues do not ruin their smile. Our Lee’s Summit, MO, dentists Dr. Jamie Thurman and Dr. Garret Guthrie offer up some tactics for how to teach your little one to keep their teeth clean:

Make it Fun

Keeping your teeth clean doesn’t have to be boring. Teaching your child the importance of keeping their smile healthy can be entertaining with fun lessons like the Egg Activity that help you child understand what can happen to their teeth if they don’t brush and floss regularly. These fun at-home activities will have your child smiling and learning something important about oral health.

Be There to Supervise

Even once your child is old enough to brush and floss their teeth on their own this doesn’t mean that your work here is done. You will still want to make sure that they are doing a stellar job every time they brush or floss. Make caring for your smile a family affair and brush and floss together. Then make sure to check your child’s teeth for any spots they may have missed.

Practice Makes Perfect

When you are first teaching your little one how to wield a toothbrush it can feel rather foreign to them, but the more often they do it the easier it will get. Our Lee’s Summit, MO, family dentists recommend that you first brush your child’s teeth and tell them what you are doing and why. Even have them practice brushing your teeth so they can get a feel for what it's like.

Choose Fun Tools

You may be okay with having a plain-old toothbrush but chances are good your child wants something a little more fun. Let them take a trip with you to the grocery store or drugstore to pick out their own toothbrush and toothpaste. There are so many fun kids options nowadays that there is sure to be a design that catches their eye and makes them more likely to brush and floss regularly.

TLC Family Dentistry is located in Lee's Summit, MO, but is happy to be providing quality dental care to Greenwood, MO, Lake Winnebago, MO, Pleasant Hill, MO, Raymore, MO, Belton, MO, Lone Jack, MO, and Harrisonville, MO. Call us to schedule your next appointment.