Your children tend to gravitate towards sugary foods, snacks, and drinks. They taste good, stimulate their taste buds, and are readily available on a large scale. However, these foods can cause severe complications for your children’s developing teeth, and simply telling them that they can’t have it anymore won’t sit well with them. Finding ways to educate them better and talk to them about the importance of good dental health when they’re younger will help them build sustainable habits into adolescence and beyond. But what goes into developing a clear strategy for talking to your kids about good dental practices? Mercer County, NJ’s favorite children’s orthodontist, Hamilton Dental, has some ideas!
Find Some Required Reading
Stop by your local library or bookstore and visit the parenting section. You can find books that help you discuss a range of topics related to your kids’ ongoing dental health and how to talk to them about it. By heeding the advice from experts in the field, you can find the topics you want to discuss and find tested methods of how to discuss these potentially complicated topics with ease.
Utilize Visuals
Introducing complicated concepts like dental hygiene can prove difficult for young children. Incorporating visual aids to break down these concepts can help your children better understand the importance of daily brushing, flossing, and overall good tooth care practices. Simple visuals showcasing each action give your child something to follow along with rather than trying to listen and then turning what they’ve been told into something they can understand.
Simplify the Language
When discussing oral hygiene with your kids, the concepts and words you would use with adolescents or other adults can be littered with big and technical words. If you try to use the same language with your younger children, you run the risk of overwhelming them and tuning out your talk about dental hygiene. The simpler you make the vocabulary you use in these talks, the easier it will be for your kids to grasp the concepts.
Whether you need to schedule your kid’s next dental appointment or need dental urgent care services, the team at Hamilton Dental is here to help! Contact us to schedule your next visit and place you and your kid’s dental health in the hands of the experts!
