Time to call out shit parenting!

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Just watched an article on BBC breakfast about decay in children's teeth.

Professional talked about scheme where teachers teach children to brush teeth each day since many children don't brush their teeth or get shown how to.

The presentator Nagga said is it right for teachers to do this and have time to do this surely parents should. The professional did everything to not blame poor parenting.

I mean, why don't we just say things as they are anymore? The parents are not parenting if they cannot be bothered to teach children to brush teeth twice a day (or for that matter toilet train). Why is it now down to teachers?

Some parents appear to do sod all but just churn out children.

Note. This is not SEN children, just children in general in particular areas. Again same with teaching to use toilet, not sen related.

Nagga points out its not in the curriculum to teach children to brush teeth. Professional again excuses crap parenting and says its just a few minutes each morning..... so WHY DON'T THE CRAP PARENTS DO IT THEN.

Unbelievably, professional says it costs the NHS about £40,000,000 yes forty million pounds a year to admit children to hospital for dental extractions!!!! Unbelievable. What is wrong with parents 😕 No wonder the NHS is struggling 😕

'Professional again excuses crap parenting and says its just a few minutes each morning..... so WHY DON'T THE CRAP PARENTS DO IT THEN.'

Well indeed. Although as a professional, you get nowhere by 'blaming' parents, because there's always a million excuses and you're made out to be the heartless baddie

Some parents expect gold medals for doing the absolute basics with their own kids

Yep. It’s appalling. We heard it on the radio earlier and DD5 said she didn’t want a teacher brushing her teeth and did she have to. The HV gives out free brushes and toothpaste, you can buy them for a quid at the supermarket. No excuses. There just aren’t any.

I see kids being bought fruit shoots and similar every time they go anywhere and their parents say they don't like water.
My dad would of told me if I don't like water I can dehydrate because he's not wasting money on a shitty drink.
Some people just have to "treat" their kids. Every single day multiple times a day

So - I agree, it’s almost unbelievable that someone wouldn’t brush their child’s teeth, it’s neglect.

But - I have no issue with schools teaching children personal hygiene as part of their routines. It’s a life skill, and as with many things we do it to support the kids with crap parents.

This, along with many other interventions, helps the most vulnerable children.

I wouldn't justI say "crap parenting"
Partly because that just passes the blame and passes the buck

I think you need to understand the why

Is there a poverty aspect to this - are struggling parents les likely ? Because all humans only have so much effort to give to life.

Is there a mental health aspect - struggling parents can't face the it ?

Confused parents - "gentle" parenting is so easily misunderstood- many parents don't know how to say no to a child , how to be authoritative. if the child says no they get stuck - if please and it's healthy don't work you have no gentle tools left as far as I can tell.

I think sometimes parents are just like "they won't let me" or "they cry when I brush them", sorry who is the parent?

A couple of children in DC's class have bad tooth decay (you can see it from distance) and neither are families where you would deem them to be in circumstances that might encourage decay such as poverty or uneducated on hygiene.

All children refuse teeth brushing of course they do it's boring and intrusive. I remember many occasions and in the end the thing that worked? A horrendously put together YouTube video that had a catchy tune. We would dance to it whilst I brushed DC's teeth. I believe guidelines are that adults should brush teeth until a child is 7 I've heard many stories of people leaving toddlers to brush their own teeth.

I didn't watch it but if its a professional they will want to be very careful about what they say on TV. 'Poor parenting' is subjective and won't allow for all situations. It IS just a few minutes each day although I agree it should be the parents responsibility. I have 2 autistic DD's and the 10 year old is in a SEN school. I know they brush her teeth there and I'm glad. I also brush her teeth twice a day for her but it's not always perfect because she bites the brush and sometimes refuses altogether (happily hardly ever totally refuses). Her sister does her own teeth but hates it and i have to watch or she wont and she only uses 0-2 year old toothpaste which is milder. She's 8. Typically developing children can be similarly difficult, I'm in no doubt about that.

I do agree it's parental responsibility but teeth are really important. They are responding to a situation which may or may not be poor parenting. Even with good dental hygiene, some kids have terrible diets too. Our high streets are full of junk food shops, coffee and cake shops, doughnuts, waffles etc. It's becoming like the USA. Some of that blame is social and government.

Good points.

The levels of basic skills not being taught by a significant number of parents is appalling. I mean is it just do sod all because someone else will do it all? I understand if parents have learning disabilities but by the sheer number of children with rotten teeth it's a huge number of parents.

£40 million spent on teeth extraction for children is societal abuse. So unnecessary and such a waste.

Don't get on started on obese children. Again what are parents doing apart from nothing to help their children! Stuffing full of sugar and fat, no teeth cleaning, no toilet training and dumping on tech. Abuse on a mass scale.

Same. What the fuck has happened? In my childhood in the 80s you drank water because it was water you were given. It wasn't a discussion.

I drank water and I ate what was put in front of me, there was no negotiation or preference about it.

Aside from children with severe SEN including food issues, why the fuck are children given these mad options? I drank water, and I ate a smaller portion of whatever meat and veg my parents were eating. We were poor, there were no other choices.

It seems mad that brushing your kids teeth isn't seen as an absolute basic anymore.

I know a 3 year old who had to have 15 teeth removed due to decay, 15!!! It's insane to me that SS don't get involved with that kind of neglect

Childsmile has been active in Scotland for many years. A pain in the butt to find the routine in nursery that works. Then the mixed messages of it's ok to brush their teeth then eat or eat and brush their teeth. Not what we were taught years ago.

My childhood was the 00s but dad was old school, no way was he wasting ANY money on unnecessary shit like beverages when water is free. He also had rotten teeth himself from eating sweets as a kid so I wasn't allowed sweets either.
He was always taking the piss out of the parents who claimed their kids couldn't drink water

It’s all about education, when it’s okay to have a sweet treat, hidden sugars, fruit juices, how and when to brush teeth etc.
We drank water (corporation pop) growing up, only because we couldn’t afford other drinks.

Totally agree.

Professional said but it's only a few minutes for teachers. It's the same few minutes for parents, so why are parents so precious, so lazy, so excused and pandered to. It's frankly pathetic.

Some parents are bone idle or don't have common sense.

I think parents of obese children, children with rotten teeth and other signs of neglect should go on a mandatory parenting course.

See also reception children who aren't toilet trained.

The Times radio discussion on this got onto Surestart, but as DH pointed out, parents would need to put their screens down to take them...

SEN isn't at all related to this either, there's no excuse for letting a childs teeth rot. Our 9 year old has a learning disability and autism but it takes 1 minute for me to brush his teeth and then he continues to try doing it himself for another minute just needing me to say when to stop as he will continue for a long time otherwise.

Its purely a lack of care regardless of a child's abilities.

I think if it's necessary then DC should be shown, but the first step should be a letter sent out to parents saying there are concerns about lack of teeth brushing, and the government should have an eye test style reminder system where any child who hasn't been to the dentist for over a year gets a letter and followed up on if its ignored.
The same with eye tests, it's shocking how many children don't get their eyes checked every 2 years and again it's only followed up with a letter if the parents have already signed up with an optician.

Mandatory parenting course or lose benefits or if not on benefits fine them. Don't have children if you can't be bothered to do the very basics.

You are not being unreasonable at all, but you'll read 1,000 excuses here today with all the reasons why parents are unable to get children to brush teeth, eat well, use the loo instead of a nappy etc 🥱.

We may as well just hire entire childcare staff to run alongside teachers as they'll soon have no time to actually teach. School is becoming nothing more than childcare centres.

It's awful.

Teachers are busy enough without teaching the very basic skills you expect parents to teach.

As someone else said, if parents put down their phones first then they might find time to fit these few minutes twice a day in. So lazy.

This makes me so mad, teachers being told how to teach basic hygiene what next teaching how to wash shower, I mean let's not have parents teach there child anything.
Half off these parents probably take great pride in their pearly whites but yet can't teach there offspring.

I remember being taught about tooth brushing at school in year 1 myself. We got given a chart to put stickers on when we brushed twice a day, I had it on my wall at home and was really proud of it.

I don't think it's a bad thing for schools to be involved in distilling really important hygiene / healthy lifestyle messaging, it's part of learning about your body. Reinforcing it at school provides a more compelling case for kids to pay attention - if both parents and school tell you the same thing there's more chance of it hitting home. It's easy to combine with learning - how many teeth you have, types of teeth, etc. This is school-level knowledge - I wouldn't expect a parent to actively teach about molars and incisors and what not - so the tooth brushing is an easy tag-on to this learning about your body. No big deal!

At our school we have toothbrushing for all the children after lunch. We are in affluent rural area but some of the children's teeth and breath was absolutely disgusting. We obviously can't force them to brush in school and a few refuse.
I don't agree with parents brushing school children's teeth for them. Supervising yes, brushing, no. I think dental professionals are viewing this from a purely dental point of view, but from a development and self esteem point of view it is invasive, overbearing and infantilising.