Today Dr. Kuiper celebrates Children's Dental Health Month and the importance of dental health beginning at a young age. Learn when you should start bringing your children to the dentist and how to set them up for success in the future!  

Dental decay, known as a cavity, is actually the most common preventable contagious disease for American children. What that means is that even though it seems like a cavity is no big deal, they are considered infectious diseases and we are working our best to prevent cavities from spreading or causing pain to your child! In order to help you out, we recommend having children visit the dentist by age 1 or by the time their first tooth erupts. While we want to look in your child’s mouth to ensure there are no cavities, we also want to make sure that we are going through with you, their parents, how to take care of baby teeth. 

Baby teeth are different than adult teeth in many ways, but at the end of the day, they still need to be brushed and flossed. As the parent, we recommend that you be the one to take care of your children’s teeth until they are old enough to tie their shoes. Just like there are different stages of development, tying shoes is a good marker of when your child has enough hand-eye coordination to begin brushing without your help. So until that point, please step in and do your best to get their teeth brushed (even with the occasional kicking and screaming!). By doing this and bringing them in for routine dental visits every six months, your children will have a great start to a healthy mouth for the rest of their lives. 

Just remember, those cavities on baby teeth are infectious, and they will spread if left unfixed! If you have any questions about your children’s teeth or want to find time for Dr. Kuiper to make sure your child is in the no-cavity club, give us a call and we would be happy to help! If you’d like to learn more about this topic, click here to visit our Pediatric Dentistry page! Happy Children’s Dental Health Month!

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