Teaching your children good oral hygiene habits is one of the most difficult yet important challenges you will face as a parent. Oftentimes, it seems as though just when you’re making progress, you have some kind of setback that causes your children to revert to poor habits once again. The key to success is ultimately to keep pushing forward, even when disappointments occur. To help make things a little easier, you can try utilizing a few of these tips.
Use Music
Brushing teeth can be challenging for children because it’s two minutes of doing a fairly boring activity without any distractions. If you add music to the mix, though, you might be surprised at how much your children enjoy their teeth-brushing time. There are countless songs available from many of your children’s favorite characters that are timed to ensure your children get the proper amount of teeth brushing. Therefore, you can either find a song that your children love or switch it up and use a different song every night.
Find A Child-Friendly Dentist
Dentists play a crucial role in teaching your children good oral hygiene habits. In addition to the preventative dental care that they provide, dentists can help instruct your children on what they should and shouldn’t be doing to keep their teeth and mouth healthy. Since they have such a significant influence on your children, it’s important to find a dentist who can work with your children and recognize their unqiue needs instead of trying to fit them into the mold of an adult.
Brush Alongside Them
On many nights and mornings, teeth-brushing time for your children can be quite chaotic, to the point that you feel more like a referee than a parent. Even with the chaos, though, it’s quite helpful for your children if you’re willing to get your toothbrush ready and brush alongside them. By showing them that they have a partner in their oral hygiene journey, they will be more likely to respect the advice and instruction that you give them regarding their oral health.
Offer A Reward
Since brushing teeth is an essential activity, it’s good if you can acknowledge a job well-done with some type of reward. Since a child should be brushing their teeth twice a day, this reward doesn’t need to be substantial. Something as simple as an extra book at bedtime or five more minutes of playtime, though, can be quite significant when it comes to teaching your child how to take care of their teeth.
As mentioned at the beginning of this list, the most important way to develop good oral hygiene habits that last a lifetime is to keep pushing forward and stay consistent. Of course, one great way to do this is to develop a consistent schedule so that your children will know exactly what to expect on a daily basis. As long as you don’t show weakness by allowing your children to skip brushing their teeth on certain days, though, you should be well on your way to success.
