Time to call out shit parenting!

YANBU. It's absolutely crazy. Getting schools involved with brushing teeth is just lazy and victim-like behaviour on the child's parents' behalf. Surely they should look at their own horrid teeth and realise that they can break the cycle.

Yes, sometimes genetics play a part, but it's four minutes of brushing per day per kid. Just be a bloody parent and look after your children!

I think there's gonna be crappy parents no matter what we do its been a thing as long as time it self.

My mother may have had her faults but she was a saint to help the needy. If a child in mine or my sisters class always gave us nits she would befriend them.Get to know their parents and offer to baby sit.Then ring one day say o no i found nits in my child's hair and offer to check theirs as well .Thus getting to the root of the issue.

She befriended the local so called chav family and helped baby sit. Their son was a pyromaniac yet my mother ,mothered their children.

Another time both her and a close friend of hers would baby sit a local alcoholics girl when she was left on her own

Although my mother has since passed nothings changed we still have these same types of people rearing children yet less of the community like my mother that helped fill in the gaps .Its just how do we help ,how do you break the cycle, how can you call people out without the outrage ,how can you help when there's not enough help for them already. Its a problem as long as time

Can’t just blame sen,my dc has sen,he was toilet trained at 18 months,he eats whatever I make as long as it’s separate,its phones phones and more phones!

I’d be interested to see how much of it is fruit And fruit juice related.
other than the tweens and teens main lining redbull most of the children I see drink plain water, have sweets rarely. But do eat and drink alot of fruit related stuff

Agree with you but if parents aren’t teaching their children, someone has to.

But I thought you were against some of the preventative measures like tooth brushing in schools?

we used to have people from Colgate come in to my primary school. They bought in samples and explained about teeth and brushing.

Whilst I don’t think business has a place in school as such. This sort of thing is brilliant and I still remember it now. Only “cost” to school was the half day lesson loss.

One difference with fizzy drinks etc was that I seem remember in the 70s only water was on offer at school. No drinking bottles just water fountains! And free (disgusting) milk until that was withdrawn.

I've said this before on threads but there are a lot of families who watch a lot of TV, so some public information campaigns about loads of aspects of parenting would be a small cost against the public benefit.

I don't expect anyone with influence to read these words though.

I don't think it's the schools responsibility at all, there's enough they have to deal with but ultimately the children are the ones suffering so I can see why they're going down this route as easier to monitor.

Both of my boys hated teeth brushing at toddler age, I refused to pin them down like people suggested but after about 2 years of determination and various different things they are now both pretty good, thankfully no damage to the teeth but it was a hard slog. I don't think it's always as simple as laziness. Mine could have ended up with decay and it would definitely not be due to lack of trying.

What do you mean "passes the blame"? You cannot "pass blame" to the person who is actually to blame. If parents are so empoverished, or mentally ill, or confused, that they can't teach their own children to brush their teeth, they need intensive intervention coupled with public shaming, not for other people to assume their responsibilities. "Gentle" parenting is ineffectual parenting, I can't blame anyone for being seduced by the concept, but if someone's IQ is so low that they can't take stock and see that it doesn't work, I am confused as to how they function in society.

I grew up in poverty due to my mother's mental illness - and believe me that understanding the factors that lead to my substandard childhood does not lead me to have any sympathy for my mother or for others like her. Any parent who is currently in a situation where they are passively abusing their children by failing to dicipline them and teach them basic life skills needs a short, sharp shock, not mollycoddling. I would argue that legal consequences are the only way to punish resistant offenders.

Its both the parents and unfortunately the state of the UK. Teachers should not be responsible for overseeing toothbrushing!

I too am shocked at how many parents simply do not do or teach their children the basics..... brushing teeth, toilet training, weaning, washing, Reading/talking, playing with their children. Even taking them to a park or a walk is too much for many and then they wonder why their children are so hyped and 'bad'!

I think a lot of parents just can't seem to consider that their baby is a person that grows up, has their own needs and wants, and need to be taught how to do everything. They simply expect their children to somehow wake up one day and use the toilet.

But........, there are so many economic and political factors against parents. I remember seeing lot of adverts and being taught periodically in primary school about brushing twice daily for 2 mins. My parents took me to the dentist regularly fir check-ups. I dont think that's happening as much now. As PP mentioned, even if they do brush, children are constantly eating hidden sugars in foods people think are healthy as well.

People arent getting education from dentists as there's hardly any NHS dentists and the remaining ones have huge waiting lists because they simply cannot take more patients, including children. The £40mil spent on extracting teeth could be used to fund NHS dentists properly.

I can't remember the last time I saw an advert promoting brushing teeth. Electric toothbrushes, yes, but nothing specifically about brushing for 2 mins.

Public health promotion in schools/health visiting: They only give free toothbrushes and toothpaste if the company (eg colgate) send it to them for free, it is area based and for some reason the companies pick and choose what areas they want to give free samples to.

Basically, children's health in the UK is nearly the worst in the Western world. A lot of that is down to poverty, services being cut and chronically underfunded, the ease of UPFs in ready made foods, sweets, oven foods, etc. Whilst it's easy to blame parenting at an individual level, the bigger picture needs to be looked at because something is going terribly wrong.

Lazy people make shit parents.

Don’t get me started on shit parenting. A child isn’t a fucking tamagotchi, but a responsibility. But the litany of pathetic excuses from lazy parents is astonishing. Just don’t breed if you’re not cut out for it.

I grew up in the 1980/90s, I don't remember ever being offered water at meals and I never saw my parents drink it. It's a real effort for me to drink water now, I don't really like it!
However I did brush my teeth and was taken to the dentist regularly. I didn't have a filling until I was mid 20s.
My own (teen) DC usually choose water over other drinks, and don't have fillings.

However I agree for children without SEN it shouldn't be up to a teacher or TA to brush children's teeth

@Kuretake
Exactly. We had a tuck shop available at every break time in Primary School and a 5p mix or a bag of sherbet on the way home.
My Secondary had a tuck shop and the ice cream van every lunch time. My children listen in awe to my tales of 50p special ice creams covered in sherbet and sauces or 20p cans coke.
I class it as good teeth rather than good parenting that I didn't have a filling until my 20's and have only had three in total. My Dad was born in the 50's grew up drinking cherryade with sugar in and has had a lifetime of dental problems. DH's dad has had false teeth at the front since his early twenties.

The issue is, as much as we can all say parents should do it, there will always be some who will not. Unfortunately the options are that someone (school in this case) step in or those children suffer as a result. Easier to treat the symptom than the disease in this case. It's presumably also much more cost effective to tackle it this way than to allow some kids to fall behind & require numerous fillings etc.

these things can be generational. Parents won’t have learnt the importance of good dental hygiene either. It’s a way to break this cycle hopefully these kids then would have good habits and pass it on to their own kids. It is a lot to expect from schools though.

Our school got in a dentist to show them how to brush their teeth and basically put the fear of god into them about not brushing. Which reinforced the message my kids get at home and was very helpful.

That's ridiculous

Theres a lack of education on nutrition and oral hygiene, some families really don’t understand it/have never been taught it themselves. This is where we miss places like sure start centres and similar where parents got this kind of support. Unfortunately poverty and areas of deprivation see more teeth decay.

I do think sure start helped fill in many gaps in hard to reach parents - we lived in areas bording very deprivation area.

I rememeber a few quick talks by staff- and a few parents hadn't realised they could get kids seen by a dentist at such young ages - and it did often spark some conversation about how we were all managing and prompting a few to actcually start brushing at toddler age - and I passed on my then dentists advice to get electric tooth brushed for the kids.

I don't think the current government will bring them back - despite evidence that early interventions like surestart save money long term.

I think kids NHS dentistry access should be more on the poltical agenda regular checkup and forming good habits can stop so many problems developing.

I don't think there's anything wrong with including it in say the health and personal development lessons. As a kid in the 80's in Australia we had a dentist come into the school to teach us how to brush correctly.

Like all of these public health initiatives brushing teeth in nursery / school is a way to have an immediate impact.

Yes, you can shout about bad parenting, lower the bar for official 'neglect', implement financial punishments,involve SS and try to remove children from families - but that's a massive governmental thing which would be very very hard to implement, extremely expensive and our current levels of services could not cope.

It's also not going to save as many teeth in the short term as just spending 5minutes brushing at school. Same applies for healthy school meals, extra breakfast clubs etc. None of these 'should' be needed. But they are needed so how can we not?

Some children wont have their teeth brushed, so seems like schools are doing it as whole class activity rather than individual shaming or having to deal with the bullying of children that may be already neglected

I agree and I hate all the 'but what about poverty' because toothpaste is a necessity and you can buy it for less than £1! Toothbrushes are the same. Poor people knows you have to brush your teeth, they aren't stupid.

If you really are that poor then you can ask for it at a food bank

I remember a dentist coming to our Primary school (in the 70s). Think we could bring our own toothbrush in but they had those disclosing tablets which showed the bits you had missed when brushing. I was all smug before the exercise as I was the only child in the room who didn't have a filling, so I obviously had superior tooth brushing techniques! Not quite so smug when the disclosing tablets showed I actually wasn't that great at tooth brushing but obviously had strong teeth!

But it was a one off. No further teaching on tooth brushing happened in school. And I do wonder whether it was partly a marketing exercise for a certain brand of toothpaste, or whether it was specifically targeting tooth hygiene.