Our recently celebrated day of overeating aside, it’s no secret Americans like to indulge in food — and not the healthy kind — the other 364 days of the year. Apparently, many people don’t mind if their children, even their babies, pick up the bad habit, too, according to a recently released study. So it’s no surprise to learn that parents aren’t thinking about dental care for their babies and toddlers, either.
Good nutrition and good dental care go together. Both are learned behaviors and both are picked up, for better or worse, at a very early age. Parents must have a solid grasp of the necessity of both and enforce them right away.
An Associated Press article last month detailed the results of a study of more than 3,000 tykes’ eating habits and discovered that many toddlers — even babies — are far too familiar with french fries, pizza, candy and pop. Couple that with the fact that many, if not most, parents think they don’t have to take their children to the dentist until they hit the age of 3 and you’ve got a fast-food recipe for obesity and oral health disaster.
Many health professionals believe that by the age of 6 to 12 months children should be getting an oral checkup from their pediatrician or family dentist. That only makes sense considering that dental diseases start forming when babies start teething. An early practice of visiting the dentist could mean fewer toothaches — and bills — down the road. Not a bad tradeoff.
Any dentist will tell you that their job is made easier or more difficult by the amount of sugary foods a child consumes. Parents shouldn’t assume that baby teeth are expendable just because they’re going to fall out someday. Even babies get tooth decay.
But parents are still developing eating habits in their small toddlers startlingly similar to their own. As many as a third of the children in the study under 2 didn’t eat any fruits or vegetables. French fries ranked as the most popular "vegetable" for those who did consume them.
As long as we keep up frenzied schedules that include running the older kids to sports practices and a quick spin through the drive-thru afterwards, our chances for making real changes in our diet and oral health care are a lot slimmer than our children’s expanding waistlines.
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