A Leeds dentist came out very strongly against various parenting practices that can ruin a child’s teeth and also carry the problem into adulthood. Early childhood caries refers to the decay of teeth in babies and young children. This bacteria borne infection is all too common in the babies of certain groups of people, and it can be directly attributed to improper parenting.
The pity is that most parents ruin their children’s teeth without even knowing that are doing so. Parents tend to be lax when it comes to their child’s oral hygiene because they wrongly believe that the condition of the baby teeth doesn’t matter since they are going to fall out eventually.
Babies who are put to bed with a bottle of milk tend to have cavities in their milk teeth. This is obviously because the sugars from the milk create acids which have the entire night in which to ruin a baby’s teeth. Allowing a baby to dawdle over a meal or a cup of juice also exposes the teeth to sugars over long periods.
Parents have to be cautioned against these practices because the bacteria that remain in the mouth can attack the adult teeth when they appear, giving the child very little chance to avoid cavities. The child should never be allowed to linger over a meal, and his or her mouth should be rinsed with water after each meal. This is the only way to prevent expensive and painful dental treatments for the child in later years.
Tags: baby teeth, childhood carries, oral hygiene, tooth decay
