Time to call out shit parenting!

[RedHot2025]

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.

Yes, my sister (and I, when I babysat) did used to have to prise my niece's jaws open. It was horrible, but tooth decay would have been a lot worse for her.

We have severely disabled kids and we do hold their arms but I know other children in our community where it wouldn't be safe or physically possible for the mum to restrain them like that, so what I'm trying to say it's not just the severity of SEN, it's the individual.

Those children are non verbal and highly volatile. I guess it could maybe be done with several adults doing a full floor restraint and clamping the head and prising the jaw open, but there's always the chance that the distress could make them bite their tongue badly etc (common). Also floor restraints like that are extremely traumatic and I imagine not recommended for tooth brushing.

Our specialist dentist is very good and helped us build up tolerance (I.e. suggested brushing for just a few seconds once a day at first then building it up with visual symbols) and we have just got lucky with our children's teeth. The dentist also flourides the teeth and does multiple procedures under general anaesthetic apparently.

That does sound incredibly difficult, and yes, in those circumstances, especially as the child becomes older and stronger, forcing tooth-brushing would be potentially dangerous. In that situation, all parents can do is eliminate sugar from their child's diet entirely to reduce the risk of tooth decay.

I'm glad you have a good specialist dentist- I hope other parents in the same position are signposted towards this service.

This attitude is part of the problem. If you make excuses every time a challenge comes up there will never be a solution.

This thread (and some others) is actually making me really glad the new changes are coming in next month and I'll be out of this bizarre and angry loop of apparently perfect parents refusing to listen to experiences of others and preferring to stamp on them to "win". I've thought for a while it was bots responding but either way it's not worth head space on a forum that is meant to be a supportive environment for women and parents. I've just posted about Reddit being a quagmire for hyper-aggression and here we are...

The thing is someone else will have to sort it out if parents don't, so either a teacher at school or left? Desensitisation maybe?

I can never fathom parents who say "they won't drink water". They do if they are thirsty but they won't if you start offering squash and juice from a very early age because they aren't drinking gallons of water. Mine happily drink water as teens and I didn't fuss if they hadn't finished their water as babies like some Mum's did because they also get water from food and milk. The only time I ever worried was after d&v bugs but they understood that when they were ill they might get a nicer drink and then when better back to water.

Also the teeth brushing is surely just a habit you build from the very start. I can remember my dd being very resistant and I had to assist with teeth cleaning for years, in fact I still check now as she seems to hate it. ....she does it though.

It's really not part of the problem. In cases of significant disability there's a proper balancing act of best interests that needs professional support. Until you're in that situation yourself, you just don't know what it's like.

Desensitisation, visuals, great specialist teachers who do tooth brushing modules at school, specialist dentists, parents given advice about when and how to restrain.

The other poster saying it was 'part of the problem' is being really unfair. I'm not sure people are aware how much you can hurt your children if you restrain incorrectly.

I know SEN is a tiny part of the tooth brushing issue but I hope the 'no excuses' brigade have a think about what some parents are required to do and that it really isn't a one size fits all solution.

Tooth decay is the number one reason for a young child to need a hospital visit , it outnumbers everything else.

Couple this with 98% of dental treatment is avoidable. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/oral-health

The problem is the child who has teeth out at a young age tends to be the child who goes on to have more and more treatment and becomes the child who has teeth out at 8, 12 and becomes the phobic adult. Early tooth decay is the most reliable predictor of poor oral health in adult life https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2013.533

Although tooth brushing does appear to help a bit , studies in Scotland and Wales where there is supervised brushing appears to show this https://www.nature.com/articles/s41407-020-0285-1

However since lockdown snacking has increased amongst adults and children, the average child in the U.K. eats 8 times a day and both adults and children grossly exceed the recommended daily sugar intake. https://www.news-medical.net/news/20220502/British-childrens-sugar-intake-exceeds-current-public-health-recommendations.aspx

These sugar choices are not limited to those in deprived groups , the vast majority of children and adults in the U.K. eat too much sugar. I have taken teeth out on both children from deprived families and those from the muesli belt who have fruit juice, honey , agave syrup and home made flapjacks .

Toothbrushing helps , early dental intervention helps , but for the vast majority of children (and adults) their diet and the way they eat needs to drastically change .

Unfortunately the statistics and experience shows that most people are unable to make these changes and , instead, accept that dental interventions are a normal way of life because they and their parents had “weak teeth” or decay is “genetic” . There are some rare syndromes and uncommon reasons for “weak teeth” , there are problems like reflux or SEN , but in a country where the most common cause for a child 5 to 9 to need a hospital stay is tooth decay , the most common reason for that is poor dietary choices .

Tooth decay is not something a dentist or government can control. It is controlled in the hundreds of choices adults make everyday at home . We need not only tooth brushing programmes , we need better information and programmes on healthy eating not only for teeth , but for 2/3 rds of U.K. adults who are overweight or obese. https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN03336/SN03336.pdf

but in a country where the most common cause for a child 5 to 9 to need a hospital stay is tooth decay , the most common reason for that is poor dietary choices .

@Lollygaggle informative post, agree with this.

You’re right it isn’t in the curriculum to teach children how to brush their teeth, however, it is in the EYFS (birth - reception) to promote good oral hygiene. There have been schemes for years in early years for educators to brush the children’s teeth or encourage them to brush their own.

It is definitely poor parenting (I would say it’s also neglect) for a parent to not be brushing their child’s teeth and letting their teeth rot.

As a nursery teacher, I 100% don’t mind the added extra of brushing children’s teeth because it benefits the child and it’s not their fault they have a lazy parent. I was neglected as a child myself and now not only struggle with tooth ache and having lots of decay but also just the routine of remembering to brush my teeth is hard some days due to it just not being part of my day growing up. If I can contribute to a child not growing up with poor dental heath like myself, I am all for it!

All the holier than thous brought up in 60s to 80s forget there were minimal pernicious influences on children’s diets - fruit shoots and the like were not freely available. Children had school nurses, school milk , nit nurses, weighing and measuring and access to dentists who routinely made 6 month appointments. When I was young a thimble full of cocoa cola was a very rare treat- cans weren’t stashed to the ceiling for a fraction of the cost of milk. Ditto sweets. Primary children now get fruit ( sweet) and mass produced sugar laden foods are heavily advertised on children’s media which is way more widely consumed than the controlled “ children’s tv “ of bygone years. . Yes parents should take some responsibility- but it’s completely disingenuous to pretend that it’s as easy and straightforward to keep children’s teeth as healthy as they used to be.

Depends on the age. As toddlers I'd wrap in abathtowel (to stop flailing limbs) and them pinch their noses shut so they had to open their mouths to breath, then brush. Only had to do it a few times before they got the message.

Am laughing at the idea that parents who can't be arsed to brush their children's teeth are going to bother taking them to the dentist.

Things that existed in the 60s-80s:
Sweets
Cake
Biscuits
Full sugar squash
Fizzy drinks

Where does this stop? Schools are there to teach children, not to make up for poor parents. If social services took children away who had tooth decay (it’s clearly a form of child abuse) you can bet your bottom dollars a good chunk of the problem would go away. And who’s to say the children wouldn’t be better off, rather than still with the awful parents.

They existed yes

BUT

They came out at Christmas and birthdays

And when I was a bit older I had enough pocket money for 4oz of sweets once a week

Which I made last 2 days usually

Teachers should not be teaching tooth brushing or dealing with any kind of toileting, barring accidents. Reinforce healthy habits by all means, but this is a job for home, and if home can’t provide it, then intervention is needed.

The intervention is the teacher these days

Cost cutting

Sometimes it might be shit parenting, but sometimes its education. I'm middle aged and my mother taught me to brush my teeth twice a day. I just assumed everyone knew to do that. But another parent I know (who cares very well for her children) said she only ever brushes her children's teeth once a day and was surprised to hear we were taught otherwise.

I can't remember - does a newborn's 'red book' have info about dental care? If not, maybe that could be added.

I don't think it is a teacher's job to arrange for an entire class to brush their teeth in the morning, but needs must. If you need to change things at a population level, this might be a good way to do it. When these children grow up, they will know how to care for their own children's teeth properly.

Another alternative (or something to go hand in hand with the above) is to have a dentist's office on the school grounds and every child in the school sees the school dentist once or twice a year, who not only checks their teeth but teaches them how to brush properly. This is what was in place when I was in primary school - in hindsight, probably because it was in a deprived area and the Gov was trying to improve child health.

At the end of the day, it's pointless to just lay blame. We have to look at how we can change things nationwide and over the long term.

Society always needs a safety net for shite. Children are born and need protection. They can’t be dismissed because they have crap parents.

It might not be the most fun thing to do, brushing a toddlers teeth but it’s just something you have to do. I don’t know how any parent can neglect their child to the point of them being in pain and having to go through having their teeth removed through sheer laziness.

This is 100% the parents job.

I agree.

I have a four year old and two year old who usually brush their teeth well without any issue. They are preschoolers though so of course on occasion they don’t want to or don’t do a good enough job so me and my husband step in to ensure they do. We also did the two man job of one parent brushing their teeth and one holding their arms in the early days that others have already mentioned, which although not a particularly enjoyable experience, went by pretty quickly as they soon got the message that teeth brushing is none negotiable.

I think that talking about dental hygiene as part of the curriculum is good as is showing the potential consequences of not brushing. I think dentists or dental nurses coming to demonstrate how to properly brush their teeth is great (and even better with free toothbrushes and toothpaste). But as a parent, I absolutely don’t want the time it takes to ensure 30 children have brushed their teeth properly taken away from the core curriculum that teachers should be teaching. I don’t want my kids to see others refusing to do it or doing a half hearted job of it etc as I feel it will undo the work me and husband have put in at home. We’ve also taught our children to stand still and safely and not run around (which was harder than actually getting them to brush their teeth) and again, I don’t want them to see the opposite of this in a large group situation!

Trying to getting an NHS dentist is more important. Nearly impossible.

This world we are living in is bonkers,there’s
no lessons in schools re cooking basic nutrition, hygiene ,basic first aid so many people with children were raised with no skills at all, and don’t even get me started on finance credit cards bank interest all of that important stuff.
you just need to take a look at the shopping trolleys of so many people living on low incomes trolley stuffed with processed food sweets, et cetera et cetera and McDonald’s is considered food!
no wonder kids have rotting teeth, if you aren’t
taught the basics by someone, what else can u do ,
if I was in government, I would be taxing Amazon and not allowing them to earn so much money in this country with paying no tax and use those funds to set up community cooking lessons child rearing , health and hygiene the damm whole lot !!
the lack of basic knowledge is another reason A and E is rammed