A fist in the mouth, red cheeks or buttocks, fever, excessive salivation, diarrhea … so many symptoms that our children can suffer when appear their first words . They are irritable and on the teeth, the chilled teething ring or the raw carrot stick are our best allies during dental surges.
And then, once they are there, these first teeth, we are so relieved …
Like mussels on a breakwater
Dental caries happens because of bacteria and sugar, says dentist. The bacteria attach themselves very well to the teeth and multiply very quickly. In twenty-four hours, a bacterium multiplies by 256, you imagine? At each food intake, the bacteria feed and turn the sugar into acid. Acid degrades the tooth and demineralizes it.
To avoid biting your fingers in a few years at the sight of a small pirate with decayed teeth, gently brush the first teeth as soon as they point the end of their enamel. With a small toothbrush, so that the child can handle it easily and the equivalent of a small pea toothpaste adapted to prevent the baby from swallowing too much fluoride. “The first year, toothpaste is not necessary, says the pediatric Nathalie Demarion, and from 1 year, we choose a special toothpaste for children that contains little fluorine.
A brush in the bath
As his first reflex is to put everything that comes under his hand in the mouth, learning brushing is fortunately quite easy to introduce in a small child. “If you give him his toothbrush, he will nibble it and brush his teeth himself. You can then guide his hand, advises the dentist. The ideal place to introduce brushing is the bath. Rather than give your child a plastic duck, give him his toothbrush. ”
By biting his toothbrush as he pleases (under your supervision, in case he pushes it too far into his mouth), your child will get used to this contact. No need to focus on the three minutes of brushing from the first tooth, at the risk of turning the washing of teeth into a real ordeal. Two minutes at the beginning, that’s enough. The essential is regularity. Bacteria must be hunted daily before they attack the structure of the tooth.
Not too many meals
Another advice from dentists is to limit daily food intake. Each feeding period increases the number of acid attacks against the teeth and maintains this acidity in the mouth. “The ideal for a child is to have four meals a day: morning, midday, afternoon tea and evening”. For very small babies, the feedings are of course more numerous. But over time, care must be taken to space them for the sake of their words. Because even if your baby only drinks milk for the moment, if he has teeth, he risks to have a cavities. Indeed, in milk, there is lactose, and like many words that end in “dare”, it’s sugar! So, it attacks the teeth.
Early childhood caries is a plague that particularly affects children from disadvantaged backgrounds or other children in difficult situations who receive sweets or sugary drinks as emotional compensation. Children who have a bottle walk fruit juice or milk all day are also exposed to these cavities. In frequent contact with food or sugary drinks, small teeth have little respite and often bathe in a bath of acidity.
No worries on the other hand for bottles of water that just rinse the throat. These caries of early childhood very often affect all teeth. There are sometimes ten or twelve cavities to be treated at the same time. A dramatic situation for the child, because there are so many cavities to be treated that one is obliged to resort to a general anesthesia to treat them. And it’s not easy to release an operating room for that. Some children sometimes have to wait four to six months before being treated for lack of space in hospitals.