"Some six year olds have never seen a toothbrush"

[SuperGinger]

Just saw an article on the BBC website about this, very sad you need your teeth for the rest of your life and we are failing our children.

Why aren't they investing in children we are storing up so many problems for the future? Especially with poor diets many children have.

That's sad

Yes i quite agree, having seen it first hand myself. It is on the list with neglect.

My DC had some learning re: cavities etc at nursery, and they had the school dentist come in if that's the correct term.
But my DC had been coming in with me since being a baby/toddler anyway. And then started behaving teeth checked when the time was right.

Nonsense. My DS is at secondary school, has always snacked, brushes his teeth twice per day and has never had a filling. None of his 9 cousins who also snack, but brush their teeth twice per day have fillings either.

His school did a brief mention of tooth hygiene a couple of years ago. Out of a class of 24, two children had one filling, and the rest had none. The two with the fillings are the only ones who regularly drink fizzy drinks, and eat chewy (Moam type) sweets.

Sorry but the evidence for snacking being a problem even when brushing teeth is very strong https://www.dentalhealth.org/news/tooth-brushing-alone-unable-to-protect-childrens-teeth-from-sugary-snacks

I would guess that the school you talk about is not in area of high needs and is certainly not typical of the average U.K. child's experience of decay eg here is England's figures https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/health/physical-health/absence-of-tooth-decay-in-5-year-olds/latest in Scotland ,NI and Wales the figures are worse . In fact this is an underestimate of decay because unlike in the past where inspections were done in proper dental clinics with proper lighting and x rays these surveys were done in schools with torches.

Even so at a lower estimate between 25% and 40% of 5 year olds in the U.K. have visible decay in their teeth .

Oral hygiene has improved but consumption of sugar and frequency of snacking has increased massively with the vast majority of children have far in excess of daily sugar recommended by the WHO. I like the info given by this dental clinic which explains well https://www.freshsmileclinic.co.uk/articles/the-uks-2020-sugar-intake-report

@Lollygaggle You didn’t say that snacking was a problem, you stated that if you snack you will get tooth decay. This is not only incorrect, but massively irresponsible on a website for parents with young children. Many parents on this thread have said they are finding it impossible to get a dentist appointment for their dc. If they read your post, they may also be stressing about giving their dc snacks as you have said they will get tooth decay if they do.

My dc does see a dentist regularly (privately) and has seen about 5 different dentists, none of whom have told him not to snack. The advice given by all of them is to limit fizzy drinks, fruit juices, sugary food (especially sweets), and raisins. Brush twice a day, and only spit out the toothpaste, do not rinse with water.

I do not live in an area of high needs, but that isn’t relevant. The issue of tooth decay is caused by not brushing teeth regularly/at all. It has nothing to do with where you live.

I'm sorry but tooth brushing is only part of the problem. If you read links above the more times a day you snack , the more likely you are to get decay . Here's a quote

"Excess sugar drastically increases the chances of tooth decay, cavities, and tooth loss. A report published by University College London in 2014 is the most widely accepted article connecting sugar intake amounts and dental health.Teeth are more susceptible to decay immediately after first breaking through the gums. If a child aged 7-10 sticks to the 24 grams of sugar a day limit, they could see a 10% chance of developing tooth decay in an adult tooth that’s been erupted for a year. If this is pushed to 40 grams a day, this becomes a 25% chance - a huge increase. On average, for every increase of 25g/d in sugar, one tooth in a child will become decayed, missing or filled. Any damage caused can’t be reversed, and will only accumulate, resulting in further dental damage and costs later in life."

We make choices for our children all the time and particularly when dental care can be difficult to access making the right choices is even more important. Tooth brushing alone will not stop decay , if someone has sufficient number of sugar attacks during a day then they will get decay whether they brush or not. Brushing with a fluoride toothpaste reduces some of the risk and damage but not all. It's important to be informed to be giving the healthiest choices if you decide to give your child snacks.

You can eat nothing but chocolate for breakfast,lunch and dinner with no snacks /sweet drinks in between and whilst it would be dreadful for your health you probably wouldn't get decay.

However eat a normal breakfast , lunch and dinner with small snacks of flavoured yoghurt , fruit juice, fromage frais frequently during the day or anything that contains sugar and you will most likely get decay.

The sugar in sweets is no worse than the sugar in granola bars or flavoured fromage frais , it's still a sugar attack that will take an hour for the tooth to recover from.

Unfortunately the problem of tooth decay has an awful lot to do with where you live , a child is 20 times more likely to have decay in the worst area of England compared to the best. It correlates strongly to social deprivation. The reasons are multi factorial but the consumption of sugar and frequency is one of the main reasons. This is why understanding what the most effective things you can do at home is so important . These are , as you say , brushing twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste and spit , don't rinse. But equally keep the number of sugar attacks a day to 3 to 4 . As every meal will have sugar in that means if you give snacks and drinks in between meals make them free from sugar and try to keep foods and drinks with sugar in to meal times only.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/768368/NDEP_for_England_OH_Survey_5yr_2017_Report.pdf

Apologies for old link but first paragraph explains situation well.

Unfortunately child oral health appears to be worse since this report with eg many more children needing hospital general anaesthetics for extractions . Correspondingly since lock down there has been an increase in consumption of sugared drinks and foods and overall daily sugar consumption.

Children having free access to sugary and acidic drinks, and to 'snacks' probably has something to do with it.

Who's giving kids free pop and snacks? And can I get some?

Absolutely most definitely not.

Why on earth should I and my children have stuff put in our drinking water because some feckless lazy arses can't be bothered to brush their own children's teeth??

If you donate to food banks then adding them to the donation point is an easy thing to do that might help
TBH I have donated adults toothbrushes and toothpaste before but forgot about children's ones

I guess as well you've got the people who think fluoride is evil so use toothpaste without it in

The kind of people who would avoid fluoride toothpaste (tiny percentage of people as its only really available in health shops) are the same kind of people who are probably living a particularly healthy lifestyle and their children almost cettainly wouldn't feature in these statistics.

My child has a medical need for snacks so I can't really help that. I try to stick to healthy snacks but part of her issue is her body struggles to maintain weight and doctors say she is too young for an accurate diagnosis. So a lot of her snacks are fat/protein and yes sometimes when we are in a hurry sugar based.

It's really difficult to manage this on a constant basis. It's a struggle to keep her in the 5-10th weight percentile. If we're not paying very close attention she slips back no-man's land below the 1st percentile and looks like a tiny skeletal baby again which makes me feel like I am failing her.

I think I would be happy to get her a little more chubby which is funny. My entire family has always struggled with being overweight and all these kids in our area are struggling with childhood obesity so before she was born I did all this research on managing pediatric diets and healthy eating habits and even got into fitness and improving my own diet and much to my surprise I'm struggling to fatten my child up instead.

I'm sure as many of you probably can imagine it's difficult to get a two year old to cooperate with any diet even if it is for their own good so we end up bribing her with full fat milk and naturally juice which is very personal favourite. Everyone always reminds us how bad juice is for her teeth and diet in general and we get the comments also reminding is that technically milk is just straight sugar too! We know this but everyday we are thinking up new ways on how to squeeze calories into her.

We have to prioritize. Her dentist has yet to find any problems. We brush her teeth twice a day. If snacking is slowly destroying her teeth then I invite anyone to propose a solution that will not physically starve her to death. Because right now, not giving her snacks, is really not in the cards for us.

You’d be very wrong! It’s very easy to tell the ones who don’t use fluoride Toothpaste because of the amount of decay

Animal milk eg cow, goat etc is not a problem as the sugars in it are not , generally , a danger to oral health. Indeed the recommendation is that if a sugary snack is consumed eating a piece of cheese straight after helps to neutralise the acids caused by sugar.

Some other milks eg soy replacement baby milks can be very sugary and can be a problem for decay. The mouth bacteria produce five to six times more acid when consuming soy milk than they do from cow milk consumption. Soy milk's lower levels of soluble calcium also mean it has a lessened capability to repair your tooth enamel after acid attacks, which increases your risk of tooth decay and cavities.

The other problem is many alternative milks such as oat, almond etc are pretty unpalatable and have sugar added to them , so it's worth seeking out the unsweetened versions.

Unfortunately it is really easy to spot those who go onto fluoride free toothpastes (massive craze for aloe Vera toothpastes a few years ago). They are the ones who come in suddenly needing a ton of fillings. Unfortunately they are also the ones who substitute all the processed white sugar with "natural alternatives" such as honey, agave ,etc replace sweet snacks with healthy granola bars , dried apricots and get rid of squash for fruit juices ,smoothies, fruit teas , lemon and honey in hot water etc. All of these have as much or more sugar than the foods they replace and just because they are"natural" doesn't make them any better for teeth.

@FatYogaLady
Will your daughter snack on something like:
Cheese
Ham
Bread and butter
Plain crackers
Breadsticks
Vegetable sticks
Plain ready salted crisps
instead of
Sugar/starch snacks in between meals?

Save all the sugar and starch-containing foods for Breakfast ,lunch and dinner instead; ie the pudding ?

That's the ideal (evidenced) way for teeth to 'repair' themselves between acid-exposure at mealtimes.

@SleepingStandingUp , their parents. It might not be pop but 'juice' will be acidic and sugary, even if it's fruit juice. Not unusual to see young children and toddlers drinking it from a bottle.
Children helping themselves to sugary or starchy things like biscuits and potato-based snacks throughout the day, instead of eating them as part of a meal.

Dentistry is in crisis yes but this also falls on the parents

feeding your child a shitty high sugar diet and not brushing their teeth is neglect

when will people start taking responsibility? NOBODY is too poor to buy toothpaste and a toothbrush in this country, you get child benefit and that’s for the CHILD

Really not surprised by this I fostered for a while and no one ever came with a toothbrush

This is bonkers, but fault is on parents. My parents weren't rich by any means, they really struggled at some point (i.e. eating mince meat once a week was considered luxury) and my mum always paid private for our dentist and white fillings. There's no excuse.