During children’s dental visits, pediatric dentistry residents at UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry wear brightly colored scrub caps gleaming with superheroes and cartoon characters, make balloon animal gifts for patients, and participate in socially distanced dance parties. These are a few of the many ways residents elicit excitement for dental visits and advocate for good oral health habits all throughout the year, but especially during the month of February.

In observance of National Children’s Dental Health Month, many pediatric dentists encourage parents to establish good oral hygiene habits with their children, educate them on the importance of oral health, schedule dental visits every six months, and make brushing and flossing a family affair.

父母可以通过刷牙，阅读牙科书籍，扮演牙医的角色以及刷自己喜欢的玩具/毛绒动物的牙齿来使孩子们对在家刷牙刷牙感到兴奋。

“日常活动是无价的，因为它们形成了习惯，良好的习惯是整个儿童期和成年期适当口腔卫生的基础。”

创建奖励系统也是建立良好习惯的绝佳工具。父母可以从纯白色牙刷开始，每天两次刷子刷子，用彩色牙刷奖励他们。当他们每天继续每天两次刷两次，每天每天牙线一次，请让孩子选择自己的牙刷带有角色。

贴纸和奖励图也可能是很棒的工具。这不仅使刷牙变得有趣，而且可以建立一个例行程序。

These preventative measures result in no lost days in school due to dental infections and prevent tooth decay, which is the most common chronic disease of childhood, even more than asthma and diabetes.

“It’s really important to encourage caregivers, parents, and guardians to bring their kids in every six months, even if it’s just for a five- or 10-minute appointment. That experience and exposure make a really big difference, because it disassociates the dentist with fear and pain,” said Sarah Arafat, DDS, MPH, first-year resident. “If the responsibility is on the child to maintain their teeth at home, then during a check-up, we can just count teeth, rather than take the sugar bugs away. It’s a team approach.”

在探视期间，小儿牙医还通过完成全部头和颈部，全面检查，真正检查牙齿的全部检查，重点关注孩子的整体健康状况。通过经常参加任命，可以尽早发现健康问题，例如扁桃体扩大，内分泌疾病，硬组织和软组织等问题。常规访问也很重要，因为主要的“婴儿”牙齿为永久牙齿提供了基础。当孩子们不照顾好乳牙时，这会导致疼痛，感染和口腔卫生习惯差。

“Healthy mouth equals a healthy body. The more you come to us, the more frequently we have regular, preventative treatment visits, and the healthier overall your child will be.” Arafat said.

Furthermore, establishing a dental home, where the entire family comes to the dentist every six months, keeps up with their recalls, flosses each day, and brushes twice a day creates a positive relationship between the patient, family, and provider. Since most children look up to their parents and older siblings, making oral health a family affair also allows children to feel comfortable and encouraged to take care of their teeth.

In a dental home, parents should also encourage drinking water and reducing sugar intake.

“A lot of parents think juice is good for their kids, since it’s fruit and the label may say 100% fruit. This is misleading, because these drinks have a lot of sugar; some have even as much as a soda,” said Rosangel Oropeza, DDS, first-year resident. “Focusing on water as pretty much the only thing that children drink, other than milk, reduces obesity, lowers the risk of diabetes, and increases overall health.”

Instead of giving them sugary orange juice, let them suck on an orange. Being able to feel the texture of the fruit will also advance their orofacial development.

Additional tips from Strassner include:

• Floss at least one time a day for two minutes;
• Use a soft-bristle toothbrush;
• Brush each morning and evening – at night is critical to remove the plaque and food particles from the teeth so the “sugar bugs” can’t use them to breakdown tooth structure while sleeping;
• Set alarms to establish a routine for brushing;
• For children under three years of age, use a smear or rice-size amount of toothpaste and for children three and over, use a pea-size amount of toothpaste.

要了解有关国家儿童牙科健康月的更多信息，请访问Go.uth.uth/DentalMonth并安排小儿牙科预约，请访问utpediatricdentistry.com