Any dentists about? Toddler tooth decay questions

[Scootergrrrl]

We had a very traumatic trip to the dentist yesterday where we discovered that DS, who's 3, has a decayed patch on his front tooth which means part of it, right in the middle of the biting surface, has come away and there's a little nick in it and a patch where you can see it's going see-through. What could have caused this?
His other teeth are fine. He breastfed in the night (all night, it seemed!) for quite a long time when he was a baby and has a normal amount of snacks and sweets, certainly no more than other children we play with.
The middle one, who's 6, also had a couple of cavities but DD, who is almost 9, has perfect teeth. Annoyingly, she's the one who drinks lemonade when allowed and eats sweets until they come out of her ears. They all brush twice a day, although I have to sit on the littlest one at the moment.
I could tell the dentist thought I was a terrible parent who gave them nothing but cola to drink and jam sandwiches and he gave me a proper finger-wagging lecture on restricting sugar and so on. He then sent us off for three months to keep an eye on the situation. I hoping that means it's not too serious - fingers crossed.
Sorry for the epic post but I've been worrying about this all night - we can't change dentists even if we wanted to as this is the only one provided through DH's work abroad.

not a dentist but my 6 yr old recently needed a filling the area dentist asked us to consider in addition to the not too many sweet things were:

Brush twice a day for 2 minutes (we were doing twice a day but not for full two minutes).
Eat no more than 3 meals and two snacks a day. A snack is anything not water so juice is a snack - this was the biggest thing I was doing wrong. Do now if DS wants juice he has it with a meal or snack not in between.
Not too much fruit (and again it counts as meal or snack)
Particularly "bad" snacks are crisps, sticky fruit stuff like jelly beans etc

Can't remember anything else.

oh I have assumed you are brushing 3 yr olds teeth not letting them do it?

I am - I have to sit on him to get him to let me, but goddammit, it gets done! I think it might be snacks at fault in our case too. Both DSs are definite grazers, rather than three meals a day types.

Do you and your DH have good teeth? I ate tons of sweets as a child and never had any fillings, even now my teeth are really good (although not v.straight!) DH on the other hand had lots of fillings, and DS2 seems to have inherited his weak teeth. He had to have a filling at age 8, I was mortified but I've seen other threads on here where parents have done all they can to protect their DCs' teeth but they still needed fillings. Don't let the dentist make you feel bad, just carry on doing your best.

My dentist did say fruit juice was bad (there was me thinking it was full of vitamins and therefore good for them!), and that it's best to eat all the sweets in one go if they have them, rather than saying "have two now and save the rest for later" etc.

juice is OK provided its treated as a snack or with a meal. Which I guess does automatically limit amounts.

And I have a child that doesn't have a sweet tooth!

I have dreadful teeth but DH has really good ones - no fillings at nearly 40! I've been looking on the internet and interestingly, it says having antibiotics at a very young age can make tooth enamel soft, and having a high fever when you are pregnant can also affect the baby's teeth. DS1 was in hospital on an antibiotic drip at eight days old and I had to have a couple of days in bed when I was pregnant with DS2 with some horrid sweaty tummy bug. Wonder if there's anything in it?

I think you are right about the antibiotic thing. Also, My DS2 had bronchiolitis when he was a year old and spent a couple of nights in hospital, the dentist said that if he had a bad illness or high temperature when particular teeth were forming it could affect them.

My daughter had similar across front teeth - hypoplasia - and has just lost them (age 6). I was reduced to tears by one dentist who blamed breast feeding (at one!) and 'giving her coke/sweetened tea in a bottle'. Which couldn't be further from the truth - I'm a right yoghurt-weaver when it comes to that sort of thing.

Anyway, later nice dentist traced it back to a period of antibiotics that both she and I were taking for ear infections. We then went in every three months and they checked them and put some intensive fluoride gel on - that's it. They got no worse in five years, which the dentist says was entirely down to manic cleaning/higher fluoride paste/limiting sugar. I also was a bit rabid about drinking through straws.

Anyway, find a helpful dentist and keep on top of it and sit it out. You know if you're likely to have caused it with sugar/cleaning issues, in which case you should certainly take advice and make changes. But if not then yes, it can be down to other factors and not your 'fault', or so I've been told.

Either way, it's really important to keep on top of it now and get some support from a good practice.