Here at Bayou Dental Group, we believe that happy, healthy smiles should happen at all ages. We understand that in order to have a smile that will last for your entire life, you need to start young and stay consistent!
That’s why we are big believers in family dental care right here in Monroe, LA. It’s important for you and your kids to get quality dental care together. It helps your kids learn the value of dental care, and it helps you maintain your healthy smile when you might ordinarily dismiss it!
Today, we want to talk about simple things you can do at home to boost the dental health of your entire family! These are things you can do together to benefit every smile in your household. Let’s get started!
1. Emphasize Dental Hygiene Routines
You learned early in your parenting experience that routines are important. Your children are a lot happier when sleep, meals, and activity time are consistent throughout each day. You can do the same thing with dental hygiene!
Make your family’s daily oral hygiene routine an emphasis in your house. Especially if you have young children, you can make this a fun time as a family! Gather together in the bathroom and brush away! Your kids will love the time with you, and it will give you a chance to model great brushing and flossing technique!
2. Make Brushing Fun for Kids
One of the secrets of kids is that they want things to be fun. If you can turn something mundane into a game, you’ll have them hooked! Brushing teeth and flossing isn’t very exciting on its own, but if you let them pick our special toothbrushes, get fun flossers, or make up a funny teeth-brushing song, you might be surprised at how willing they are to participate!
3. Drink More Water
One thing that parents often dismiss is the way something seemingly healthy, like juice, can have a negative impact on little smiles! We often assume that giving our children something like milk or juice is going to do more good than harm, but we have to be really careful with this thinking!
Milk is great, but we recommend that you serve milk with meals and encourage your child to drink water throughout the day. Juice has some vitamins, but it is also loaded with sugar, and many of the nutrients from the fruit or vegetable have been lost in the juicing process! It’s best to avoid juice and stick with water. You could slice up fresh fruit and drop it in water to boost the flavor instead!
4. Stock Healthy Snacks
Just as some seemingly healthy drinks are harmful, so are snacks! We generally think that pretzels and crackers are better for our children than candy and chips, and this is absolutely true! They are better, but there are still other options that will benefit your child more.
If you can teach your child to love fresh fruits and vegetables from a young age, that child will be in great shape to grow strong and healthy! The vitamins and minerals in fresh, crunchy produce will immediately impact your child’s smile. The texture will also help give your child’s teeth a scrubbing while he chews!
5. Maintain Routine Appointments
One of the best things you can do for your family, beginning at a young age, is to come to the dentist for routine cleaning appointments. We know it’s tough, especially if you are already scared of the dentist, but your kids don’t have to be! We are a comfortable, friendly dental office, and we are great with kids!
Settle into a routine of coming into the office each six months, and your children will be much more likely to maintain this habit throughout life, which will ensure a healthy smile for a very long time!
Contact us today to get started. We would love to meet with you and your little ones very soon. We can’t wait to help you improve your family’s smiles beginning today!