Helping Your Child Embrace Oral Health Away From Home
Engender good habits early!
Part of being a parent is ensuring your child maintains their oral health to a high standard.
This includes helping them feel positive about their oral care, taking them for regular checkups at Abbey Road Dental, encouraging them to make the right food and drink choices and teaching them how to brush their teeth properly.
The problem is, getting them to make the right decisions when they aren’t with you and school can be a huge hurdle when it comes to encouraging your child to make healthy choices when it comes to eating and drinking. Although you will have considered their overall health, it is also important to keep their dental health in mind too. This is a critical stage for your child as their baby teeth pave the way for healthy and strong adult teeth.
Children of all ages are susceptible to cavities. It doesn’t matter what age you are, if you don’t practice excellent dental health habits you are at risk of a negative impact on your oral health. It is important to recognise this risk and help your children make the healthiest choices when they are and aren’t with you. With peer pressure, advertising and curiosity, it’s not the easiest job to do this, but it is possible. Here are some tips to help you along the way:
Make Sure You Reinforce Healthy Eating At Home
A good, balanced diet will help your child to grow strong and healthy, including their teeth. Opt for low sugar, low starch foods and where possible – whole foods and unprocessed (the least likely to contain hidden ‘nasties’) are best. Eating healthy food at home that your child enjoys, will encourage them to make the right choices away from home, simply because healthy choices will be habit and exactly what they are used to.
Give Them Healthy options
Give your child healthy options they love to choose from. The most natural products are the best, including whole fruit, dairy or dairy alternatives that are fortified (high calcium), nuts, seeds and whole food snacks like homemade raw bars.
Try To Have Fun With Healthy Foods
The more fun and tasty healthy foods are, the more your child will crave them and actively ask for them. So try having fun with healthy foods, making them little vegetable pizzas with smiley faces, cooking fresh vegetable pasta at home so your child feel proud when they eat it at school the next day, knowing they made it.
Make Oral Hygiene Fun
You should encourage your child to be proud of their big strong teeth, so they actively look to take care of them. Make brushing fun, and talk about why certain foods are really positive, and others are really bad. Educate your child so they aren’t afraid of eating certain foods, but so they understand some foods are occasional and others we eat to grow big and strong.
Be The Example
Children love to imitate, so if you make a junk food stop exciting, and moan when you have to eat your vegetables, your child will likely follow suit. Make healthy choices to set an example, so your child wants to be big and strong like Daddy because he ate all his broccoli, or happy and smiling like Mummy because she ate all the strawberries. Remember, you can’t stop them making some bad choices, but you can encourage them to make the right ones by making good dental health choices exciting, tasty, fun and rewarding during the time you are with them.
Call Our St John’s Wood Clinic To Make An Appointment
Here at Abbey Road Dental we love promoting positivity with oral hygiene, and we have lots of tricks up our sleeves to help our littlest visitors get on board with this healthy attitude towards their own dental health. Please call us on 02076241603 to make an appointment at our NW8 clinic and we can help you get your little one excited about making their smile beautiful and strong!