Written by Alex Rushworth BDS DPDS FHEA
Time to get up. Are you up yet?
You’re going to be late. Get dressed.
Where are your socks? You’ll just have to wear the blue ones. No, you can’t miss school because you’ve lost your black socks.
Eat your breakfast. Well, I’m not Jonny’s mum, you’re not Jonny and we have Weetabix for breakfast, not Smores Cereal.
Put your shoes on. Put your shoes on. Put your shoes on. Put your shoes on.
No, I haven’t got eggs and golden syrup – you didn’t tell me you needed them for baking today.
Water bottle. Water bottle. Water bottle.
Let’s go. Now – let’s go now. We’re going to be late. Everybody out, I’m locking the door. What do you mean you’ve forgotten your water bottle????
Sound familiar? Happening in every house with school-age children. Want me to throw toothbrushing into the mix??
But why not? Why is toothbrushing or going to the dentist such a negative experience in so many households?
Let me help you make it fun and an easy part of your daily routine.
I’m Alex, a 51-year-old mum of two, with 35 years’ experience in paediatric dentistry. There is nothing I’ve not seen or heard, and yet every day still surprises me……What’s the saying about never working with children??!!
What You Eat And Drink Makes A Difference (and why not to listen to your Granny)
Remember when your gran used to give you sweets and tell you to make them last? She was wrong. Eat them all in one go.
Every time you have any food and drink, your mouth becomes acidic and then takes at least 30 minutes to get back to normal. So, if you eat one of your gran’s sweets every half an hour, your mouth stays acidic. And it’s that acid that softens the outside surface of your teeth and leads to dental cavities or holes in your teeth.
These bursts of acidity are even worse if it is something sweet. So, it’s best to have those treats from gran as part of a meal, not later on.
Golden Rule: eat three meals and one snack per day, with at least an hour between them
Golden Rule: only drink milk or water between meals
Golden Rule: keep all other drinks and any sweet treats to a mealtime
At night, when we go to sleep, so does your mouth, so there’s not as much saliva swooshing around. So that means getting back to normal takes even longer.
Golden Rule: Have nothing to eat or drink in the hour before you go to bed or through the night, except water
Watch your sugar
Knowing how much sugar is in your food and drinks is really helpful too – not just for your teeth but also for your general health and for the effects that a sudden big sugar hit has on children. Lots of advice and labels use grams or teaspoons, but would you know what that meant to you? And would that stop your children from asking for it?
A glazed ring doughnut has 10g of sugar in it. Our daily recommended amount of sugar is 26g, so say two and a half doughnuts. But that includes everything – fruit, bread, pasta….
So, look at your labels and do some easy maths by seeing how many tens, how many doughnuts, are in that packet or bottle. You may be surprised! For example, a medium fast food outlet milkshake is 5 doughnuts; a bowl of chocolate cereal can be 2 doughnuts; a bottle of smoothie is 3 doughnuts; those fruity wind-up lunch box things are 2 doughnuts.
And just to be clear, squished fruit is pure sugar hitting the teeth and body. Whole fruit has the sugar still packaged up until it gets fully digested in your stomach.
Golden Rule: Know how much sugar is in your food and drink so you can talk about making good choices.
How To Protect Your Teeth From The Demon Doughnuts (whatever form you’re having that sugar in)
So, here comes the science bit. But my version of it.
I soon discovered that children like to know ‘WHY?’, but they also have the attention span of a gnat and no understanding of time. I had to find a new way to explain why brushing teeth is important – and so my Sugarbugs were born.
Six billion bacteria live in the mouth, which is as many as there are people on the planet – Sugarbugs. They eat your leftovers, whatever food and drink is left hanging around your teeth. They get full and then they need the loo.
Sugarbug poo
They have absolutely no manners, and so they just go wherever they are. So now you have 6 billion piles of Sugarbug poo on your teeth! The more ‘doughnuts’ you’ve eaten, the more poo there is. The more often you eat and drink, the more often they poo.
The poo is powerful stuff – it smells and gives you bad breath, and it is acidic, so it melts your teeth and causes holes. It collects in the top of your teeth, where they squash your food; in between your teeth, where your tongue can’t try to wipe it away; and down by your gums.
To make your teeth stronger and to make them more resistant to the Sugarbug poo, use a fluoride toothpaste. I know there is a lot of negative noise about fluoride. But all the scientific evidence shows there is no harm caused by normal daily use of toothpaste. Other research shows that it significantly reduces the risk of tooth decay. We use fluoride toothpaste in our house.
Golden Rule: Use a toothpaste that contains fluoride in the right dose for the age, and use the right amount. Children under 3 need a smear of 1000ppm toothpaste; children 3-6 need a smear of 1450ppm toothpaste; anyone over 6 needs a pea-sized blob of 1450ppm toothpaste. No one needs a whole brush full of toothpaste like the adverts show.
Tips for making teeth brushing fun for kids
Toothpaste works by making your teeth stronger in the first place, meaning the acid has a harder job breaking down your teeth. But it also starts to repair any damage that has been done. So, brushing at the beginning of your day gives your teeth the armour they need to withstand the day. Brushing at night removes the day’s food and drink and helps repair the damage they’ve done.
It needs to be done every day – and this is non-negotiable! As soon as brushing becomes a punishment or not doing it becomes a reward, then it has negativity attached to it. The sooner children realise it is a positive thing that happens twice a day every day, the sooner it forms part of their routine.
Brushing skills
Brushing requires time and skill. Children won’t have ether until they are at least 10 years of age. Children with any neurodiversity, learning disability or physical disability will need help for longer.
Think of toothbrushing as a responsibility for a living thing – would you let a 5-year-old cross the road unattended or let a 7-year-old have sole care for a pet? A responsible adult needs to do the brushing or supervise and help until a child can manage fully on their own. Not helping means a higher risk of tooth decay or pain.
Golden Rule: Brush twice a day, every day – morning and night – for long enough to brush all the sides of all the teeth you have. Usually, we say 2 minutes, but if your baby has only got 4 teeth, that’s probably about 1 minute 40 seconds too long.
Brush before breakfast to prepare your teeth for the day. Brush last thing at night and then have nothing to eat or drink after that except water.
Golden Rule: Spit, don’t rinse – with water OR mouthwash. We want the toothpaste to stay and do its magic. If you rinse it out, it can’t do that. If you rinse with a mouthwash, you swap 1450 bits of magic for 500 bits of magic. If you want to use a mouthwash, use it at a different time from brushing, like after lunch. While your child is too young to spit, only use a tiny amount of toothpaste so they can swallow it.
Tooth decay – the facts
So, there you have it. Easy. Except it’s not – it’s hard work every single day. But the reason we do it is because 60,000 school days are lost every year to tooth problems; nearly a quarter of children in the UK have tooth decay; removing teeth under a general anaesthetic costs £80million a year, and bad teeth affect sleeping, eating, talking, learning, making friends, and having confidence. So, a few minutes a day is a small price to pay.
You can find out more about me and the Sugarbugs on my website.
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