To be totally confused about teeth! No bottles, no dummies, fluride suppliments.......EAK!

[sw1]

DS is 14 months and still has a morning and bed time bottle and a dummie to get off to sleep then it falls out and thats it. Doctor "friend" says its all going to end in rotton teeth?!

do you brust his teeth?

Is doctor a dentist?

if yes / no (in that order!) I think you'll be fine and DS will be like the majority of other kids of his generation

Twice a day! Every day!
She is a doctor who often makes you feel crap about everything!

Do you brush his teeth after the bed-time bottle?

Assuming you aren't coating his dummy in honey or dipping it in full-strength Ribena or anything, I'm sure it will be fine. But it is probably a good idea to do teeth after bottle.

to be honest the whole baby teeth thing does make me laugh.
they are baby teeth, there is a reason why we have evolved to have TWO sets of teeth.
worst that will happen is a few cavities.. then the teeth fall out and are replaced by shiney new ones.
long as you are brushing your babies teeth, and arnt giving him boiled sweets to suck on all day long, does it REALLY matter.

i mean ffs! i swear doctors/dentists are out there to make u feel like a shit parent over any little thing.

My neighbour's little boy had to have fillings when he was three. Not a nice experience for a small child at all.

Milk teeth are not supposed to develop cavities - nothing natural about that at all. Mother nature didn't invent refined sugar, sweeties and processed food.

edam / lockets- 4 of my daughters milk teeth came through with dimples in them where they only had a shallow coating of enamel on them - I had never given her anything but breast milk - no dummy nothing at all and was convinced I must have done somthing wrong during my pregnancy. Several parents who i confided my concerns it repeated your sentiments, that there should be no natural reason for the dimples in her teeth and I was really distraught. I must be the cause of this harm to my child.

I took my daughter to a my gp and then a private dentist to find out what could have caused this. And shock of shocks I was told it was very normal and very common. I was also told that it is usually on the eye teeth near the gumline. Which is exactly where it was on my daughter. I was also told that because the enamel was thinner in those areas sooner or later it would go through and would form a cavity.

We have always used a high flouride toothpaste with our daughter and even at age 5 we do the brushing ( she gets a turn) and she has just had 2 fillings that have not been caused by neglect and a diet of processed sugar and juice. I am sure things for her woud have been much worse if she had had a crappy diet.

Its very easy to make parents worried and feel terribly guilty if their child has to have dental work carried out. As mums we are all too willing to accept the blame if our child has to have a procedure that society assumes is a result of a parents behaviour, but this is not always the case.

I am sure that the mother of the child you refer to feels quite a bit of guilt that her child had to go through a dental procedure and embarrasment that others will be judging her parenting skills on this.

I feel very lucky that I live in a country where problems like this can be accuratley identified and rectified without distress or pain to the child.

sw1

Have you considered telling this gp that their bedside manner / tact needs some refinement??? docs aren't supposed to make you feel crap - they are generally expected to improve matters

tw1inkley, I was commenting on the post before mine that suggested there was no need to worry about decay in milk teeth because they'd fall out.

Completely different to your situation. My neighbour admitted (in an all-Mums together isn't it a struggle to be perfect way) that she hadn't always been as careful as she might have been with toothbrushing.

I didn't judge at all, just felt relieved that all those battles with toddler ds to brush his teeth had been worth it. (And don't even talk to me about his reluctance to actually go into the dentist's consulting room - even though no dentist has ever done anything worse than look inside his mouth...)

Thanks everyone. She drives me mad......teeth, vaccinations, food the list goes on.

Yes we do brush after his bottle. He is a very poor eater, lost weight recently in fact and so I need to give him milk before bed to keep his iron levels up. We aren't in the best place at the moment to change to a cup, we will as soon as, just not right now. I am still a bit unsure as to how a cup is much different to a bottle? Either way, the milk is drunk then and there, the teeth brushed.......is it much better?

My dentist is v happy with my DCs teeth yet they had bottles way past their first birthday and we are not very good on teeth brushing.

and I forgot the dummy too. DS had a dummy at night until just before his FOURTH birthday.

I think its partly genetic anyway! How does it work if you have a private dentist? Our is so would we have to pay for DS?

edam Glad that you have clarified your statement as it did not read that way at all to me.

"Milk teeth are not supposed to develop cavities - nothing natural about that at all."

I am sorry but to me the above read as though you were quoting a fact from somewhere as it is a very flat and final statement and there is always a danger that someone will use your quote as fact and quote you if you see what I mean??

Thanks for clarifying...

sw1

As you can imagine we have had a lot of tooth related discussions in this houshold and according to the health visitor and dentist bottles can pose a problem as children get older because of their tendancy to hold them in their mouths instead of having a drink and putting it down as they generally would with a harder spouted cup.

Because it's right there in their mouths they tend to sip a small amount very frequently and this means their teeth are constantly bathed in the drink. This is why they ( dentists and healthvisitors) always urge against juice in bottles...

My health visitor and dentist both told me that the "danger to teeth" with bottles doesn't really exist if the milk is drunk in one go, especially if the teeth are then cleaned about 20mins later. I was told that cleaning teeth straight after drinking anything containing sugar is not advisable as it can rub the sugar acids into the teeth.(dentist)

As for private dentist I paid for a consultation. Children are entitled to free nhs dentistry, but not all private dentists do nhs work as well so its worth ringing to check with the secretary.

My MIL was a paediatric dentist. Cue vigorous brushing when we go to Granny's house .

She badgered us incessently about DD having bottles and a dummy. Apparently milk contains a lot of natural sugars (even breast milk). Funnily enough, our dentist was pretty cool about it, and said so long as it didn't continue beyond 3yrs, it wouldn't be much of an issue. Having said that, I did take my MIL's advice, and watered down my DD's bottle when she was old enough to be getting enough calcium from the rest of her diet.

I have read some literature lately about teeth brushing, and it seems that enamel erosion is as much of an issue as decay is. It seems that brushing teeth too soon after eating / drinking can cause erosion. IIRC you should wait at least 1/2 hour after food / drink before you brush.

According to my MIL, although baby teeth are going to be replaced anyway, if you lose your baby teeth too early, then it causes problems for the adult teeth coming through, as the jaw isn't developed enough, and it will cause overcrowding and the need for orthodontics in later life.

TBH you 'doctor' friend sounds quite overbearing and bossy. I think there will always be an inevitable balancing act between competing needs - dental health versus the need to get enough calcium in the diet versus emotional / behavioural development - I could go on, but hopefully you get my point.

BTW the lite cup is a fantastic substitute for bottles and traditional sippy cups. We have several of them, for the DC and us as well!

"to be honest the whole baby teeth thing does make me laugh.
they are baby teeth, there is a reason why we have evolved to have TWO sets of teeth.
worst that will happen is a few cavities.. then the teeth fall out and are replaced by shiney new ones"

childrens teeth should not have fillings

and sometimes their 2nd set of teeth can be ruined by juice in bottles/sweets/not brushing

this happened to a friends neighbours child

his 2nd teeth grow grey and weak

he has had to have 2 removed as so bad, he is now 12

dentists normally advice dummies going as can bend their teeth round and make them stick out - as can thumbs

"A few cavities" even in baby teeth can lead to abscesses, awful toothache requiring treatment, possibly extractions, possibly under G.A.