Your kid's teeth?

[prairiemama]

I'm getting kinda berated over at Natural Family for not pinning Robin down and thoroughly brushing her teeth every night. How do you do dental hygiene with your kid? We give Robin her toothbrush with toothpaste on it and she usually brushes them sort of haphazardly, but they do get some attention. Sometimes she'll let me finish up. We don't brush in the morning, and I don't force her to do it or do it for her because I figure later on, I'll want her to have positive associations. But apparently this is dooming her to dental surgery under general anesthesia :P.

Comments

[bluepapermate.livejournal.com]

That was our approach with Suzannah as well. Recently, she went through this bout of really not wanting to brush or brush very well or have us help, so we were a little more pushy, but when she was Robin's age we were pretty relaxed.

We STILL don't usually brush in the mornings, though we probably should. But you know, now, at three, she's pretty good at brushing her teeth AND she seems to like it, so...there you go!

[lolacat.livejournal.com]

OK. Does Suzannah see a dentist?

The people in this post are seriously advocating for holding your child down and brushing their teeth 4x/day.

[bluepapermate.livejournal.com]

She has not seen a dentist yet. Age three is when my dentist starts to see kids, so we'll probably take her sometime this year -- but my understanding is that it's more just a "getting to know the dentist" kind of visit to make kids comfortable with it, rather than some huge cleaning thing.

We honestly have held Suzannah down a couple of times -- but generally if she's had a rare sugary/sticky treat or something and I know there's all kinds of junk on her teeth. And if we're supposed to do that four times a day we're definitely screwed. (Although at this point I kind of feel like we should be doing it in the mornings too. We'll work on that.)