What Can Bad Dental Hygiene Lead To?
If you want your child to keep their beautiful smiles for life, supported by strong teeth and healthy gums, then you’ll want to start them on the path to a lifetime of great dental hygiene and dental care habits. The reason why is pretty straightforward: Bad dental hygiene habits lead to a lifetime of painful, damaging dental health risks.
If you’re not sure exactly what those risks entail, now’s the perfect time to find out about all the serious, negative effects that bad dental care habits can mean for your child—including the expensive dental care procedures you might need to pay for down the road. Armed with this knowledge, you can better prepare your child to care for their oral health themselves throughout their lives, and prevent those painful consequences altogether.
What Are the Health Risks of Bad Dental Hygiene?
When your child doesn’t consistently practice proper dental hygiene, those bad habits can result in a lot more than merely unpleasant breath. Bad dental hygiene can actually lead to serious health risks for your child, both while they’re growing and during adulthood.
Some of the most serious and significant health risks of bad dental hygiene include:
- Unsightly surface stains
- Cavities and tooth decay
- Pain and toothache
- Complications from diabetes
- Dementia
- Cardiovascular disease
While these dental and health problems are certainly serious and concerning for any parent, the good news is that your child can avoid most of them by learning and practicing solid oral hygiene habits on a consistent basis and keeping up with routine, regular visits to a dentist.
What Habits Constitute Good Dental Hygiene Habits?
With good oral hygiene habits firmly instilled, your children can proudly display healthy smiles and great dental health both now and throughout their lives. But what exactly does it mean to have good dental hygiene habits? At a minimum, you should teach your children to:
- Thoroughly brush their teeth with good technique on a daily basis
- Properly floss in between their teeth every day
- Consume the right drinks and foods to support good oral health, and avoid those that contribute to tooth decay and cavities (such as sugar-loaded sodas and desserts)
The key to successful dental hygiene instruction with children is stressing the importance of consistency of these good habits. It’s not enough that your child understands how to brush and floss. They also have to put that knowledge into daily practice consistently, over time.
Help Your Child Avoid Bad Dental Hygiene With a Kool Smiles Partner Dentist
While it’s best to begin teaching your child great oral health habits as early as possible, it’s never too late to correct lax habits. When you partner with a highly skilled and compassionate dentist to teach your child how to take care of their teeth from an early age, the odds increase that your child can maintain and enjoy that healthy smile for years to come.
If you need to locate a dentist with whom you can team up to help give your child the best possible start on a healthy smile for life, why not consider one of the many Kool Smiles partners? With dentists and clinics all over the country and our straightforward location directory, it’s simple to find a dentist near you today. Our partner dentists share our mission to make sure all children have access to great dental care and education, so that no child ever has to find out what bad dental hygiene can lead to both now and in the long run.
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