Don’t Frighten Your Teeth This Halloween!

19 / 10 / 2017

Don’t Frighten Your Teeth This Halloween!

The Lighthouse Dental Team Offers Some Non-Scary Advice For Parents

It is only a couple of weeks away from Halloween now, and many parents are probably dreading the thought of their children coming home with big bags of sweets and the general hyperactivity that often goes with it. From an oral health perspective, this can obviously be a potentially challenging time for children’s teeth.

In today’s Lighthouse Dental Practice blog, we take a look at a few ways that parents can help keep their kids’ teeth healthy at Halloween.

Be selective and strict

Every child will have their favourite sweets, but as parents, our responsibility is to look after them, and this can sometimes mean denying them the things that they want, or ‘need’ as children often state. The worst sweets for children to eat are those that remain in the mouth for a long time. Sweets that are sucked over a period of time, or very chewy sweets, such as toffees, means that the teeth come into contact with sugar for longer periods of time. Removing these from the trick-or-treat ‘stash’ whilst they sleep, or agreeing a deal to swap sweets, or offer toys as a reward instead, will pay dividends in the long run, helping to avoid dental problems such as tooth decay and gum disease.

You should also make sure that your children do not eat sweets continually. Allowing lengthy breaks between sweet eating allows the saliva to wash away some of the sugar and helps restore the mouth to normal levels of acidity.

Alternative activities

While it is unlikely that you will be able to stop the consumption of sweets altogether; making Halloween a family event and taking part in activities can help to distract their attention from over-indulging. Making a Halloween pumpkin can be fun and allows the kids’ imaginations to flow. Why not also roast some of the pumpkin flesh to eat, or even make a delicious pumpkin soup?

Additional attention to cleaning

Ultimately, however successful, or unsuccessful, you are at reducing the consumption of sweets, the most important thing is to make sure that your children clean their teeth especially well at times such as this. It is likely that your children will be excited, and perhaps on a sugar rush too, and it is therefore important that you take the time to supervise their brushing, making sure that they do so for at least 2 minutes of proper brushing. Flossing should also be encouraged in older children. This will not only help to remove bacteria from between the teeth, but also very likely, small pieces of sweets or toffees that have found their way there and become stuck.

A useful addition to the cleaning regimen is to encourage your children to chew sugar-free gum in periods when they are not eating sweets. This not only helps to remove food and bacteria but increases saliva flow which helps to wash them away too.

Finally, if your child is not registered with a dentist, or hasn’t seen one for some time, now is a good time to arrange an appointment to see one of the dentists at our child-friendly Ipswich dental practice to make sure that your child is on the right track to having healthy teeth and gums.

To arrange an appointment, or to register with a dentist, please call the Lighthouse Dental Practice on 01473 257379.

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If you would like to speak to a member of our friendly team about any of the issues in this article please visit our contact page or call us on 01473 257379.