It's A Good Time To Add New Dental Hygiene Routine For Kids And Teens

A New Year is a great time to put in place a new dental hygiene routine with your kids and teens. 

The energy and comments of everyone around will help make the change seem natural and positive for your kids. Instead of one more unreasonable parent demand, your new habits can be a new years resolution that is actually easy to keep.

A great component to add to their dental hygiene routine is the "parent quality time" aspect we have discussed in some other articles.

For small children and toddlers you can add in hands on effects like hugs and helping them with the flossing. Throwing in the fun parts like a brushing song to mark the minimum 2 minutes mark or a bright smile story while they brush makes your attention fun and positive rather than stern parental.

For school age children you can still have a before and/or after hug to look forward too. Take the moments they are brushing to tell them something you like about them or that you liked about their day. This reinforces hygiene time as a time of positive strokes. Also good to add, is to say to them afterward, "Let me see your beautiful bright smile". So that again, you are not a stern parent making them do a chore but a caring parent admiring their happiness and appearance.

Teens especially can benefit from a re-vamping of their hygiene routine. Now that social interaction has become much more important in their lives, and often orthodontia and braces are on the horizon or exist, hygiene needs have changed too.

For breath, introducing teens to a tongue scrapper can be one of the biggest favors you can do for them -- and their social life. Good breath begins with controlling bacteria, and the tongue is a place bodies will use to rid itself of waste that can heavily contribute to bad breath.

Adding tongue scraping into their morning routine can make a big difference to the success of  your teens interactions with their peers and teachers during the day.

Especially, teens with braces and other devices need to be more aware of the importance of irrigation with water to the success of their hygiene. Since food particles and chemicals can get easily trapped, irrigating with water (even just swishing, though an electric water irrigation device is best)can make a huge difference in the ultimate state of their teeth after orthodontia. And, of course, will help keep  breath fresher.

I would still recommend asking to see their beautiful smile afterward. Even as they groan and complain and roll their eyes at that silly routine, on an underlying level it will give them the feeling of love and approval from you as parents, that can't be found anywhere else.

So Happy New Year ALL...
And happy new dental hygiene routines, too!


 
Karen Chu DMD

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