Two Children’s Habit that can Interfere with Oral Health

As parents, you undoubtedly want the best for your children. Checking to doctor regularly, give your children nutritious meal, make sure your children have good physical activity are a few things you do to make sure they grow optimally. Nevertheless, your children often do a lot of things that cause detrimental effect for their health, like sucking their fingers, biting their lip and pushing their lip away. That habit need to be examined further, moreover if your children has done this bad habit for a long time, because this habit can interfere with the health of teeth and oral cavity.

Here are the following ways you can follow to deal with your children’s bad habit:

Finger sucking

This activity is a normal activity for baby and preschool children. This activity does not have any significant effect on oral cavity, at least not until the permanent teeth appear. Once permanent teeth appear, finger sucking can influence the position of teeth and make the it uneven. This condition will eventually lead to chewing difficulty. “Most children suck their fingers until the 4^th years of their life, but if your children keep doing this habit after that period, you need to do something to modify this habit, so this habit will not cause further damage,” explained Richard P. Dugas, DDS, a dentist in Bourne, Massachusetts.

There are three things that contribute to the severity of teeth and oral cavity problem caused by finger sucking, which includes intensity, frequency and sucking duration.

How to deal with it:

You need to remember that finger sucking during the oral phase is a normal thing. However, if your children still suck their fingers until pass 4 years old, you can stop that habit by doing the following:

• Find the cause. Your children usually suck their fingers to find comfort. Know their daily habit including how they adapt to their surroundings.
• Support your children. Explain why your children need to stop this habit.
• Remind your children. Make some agenda or calendar that record your children success in avoiding finger sucking.
• Give rewards. You can give compliment and present that your children love if they successfully loss this habit.

 You can do these tricks to solve your children’s finger sucking problem:

• Rub your children’s finger with unpalatable substance, yet safe. Brotowali extract is famous due to its bitterness but non-toxic. This extract is safe due to its use in many traditional medicine.
• Apply some water- resistant fingertip plaster.

If this habit still happens until your children pass 7 years old, you can work together with dentist to stop it. Your dentist can make an orthodontist tool to avoid the teeth from touching the oral cavity, so the pleasure of finger sucking is no longer felt.

Tongue Thrusting

Tongue thrusting is a habit when your children thrust their tongue and press their teeth during their leisure time, when they are talking or swallowing. The swallowing movement with tongue thrusting will move the position of the front teeth. This habit usually occurs due to enlargement of tonsil, mouth breathing, decrease in upper teeth arch size or psychological aspect.

How to deal with it:

If your children have the habit of tongue thrusting, consult to a dentist immediately. Your doctor will do a series of examination and treatment, starting with controlling the bad habit, even the possibility of operation if the level of damage is severe.