Junior Dental Care

Infant Dental Care (< 2 years)

• Clean your child’s mouth with a damp gauze or cloth after feeding and at bedtime.
• Avoid letting your child fall asleep while breastfeeding or bottle-feeding with milk in his/her mouth. This will increase their risk of nursing/bottle caries. (decay)
• Wean from the breast/bottle by their first birthday and regulate their feeding habits.
• Your child’s first dental visit to the paediatric dentist should be scheduled by their first birthday or when their first tooth appears.
• As soon as their first teeth erupt, begin brushing with a small, soft-bristled toothbrush using only water or a minute smear of fluoride toothpaste. Continue cleaning other areas of the mouth with a clean damp gauze or cloth.

Ages 3 – 5

• Most children will not acquire the manual dexterity needed for proper toothbrushing until the age of 8-10. Therefore, parents should help their children with toothbrushing at this age.
• Begin flossing in any areas where teeth are touching.
• From the age of 3, use a small pea-sized amount of fluoride toothpaste. Advise your child to spit and not rinse.
• Plan nutritious, well-balanced meals and reduce snacking and sugar.
• Bring your child to the dentist for dental check-ups every 3-6 months. The interval will be determined by the dentist based on an assessment of your child’s overall dental health.

Ages 6 – 12

• Your child can start shouldering some of the responsibility for brushing and flossing under parental supervision. Most children’s coordination becomes adequate for brushing and flossing between ages 8-10.
• Your child should be using a pea-sized amount of fluoride toothpaste. Encourage your child to spit and not rinse the toothpaste.
• Continue with regular dental check-ups and cleaning with the dentist.
• Limit snacking (frequency of eating) and sugar intake.
• In some cases, the dentist may advise protective sealants for your child’s permanent molars to prevent decay. The dentist may also recommend fluoride treatments to strengthen your child’s teeth and prevent decay.
• An orthodontic assessment is done to recognise and intercept any possible developing orthodontic problems. Where warranted, a consultation with the orthodontist may be recommended. Early intervention can prevent more serious orthodontic problems from arising.

In order to help your child feel at ease, the dentist may ask the parent to sit on the dental chair and hold their child during the exam. Sometimes, parents may be asked to wait in the reception area during part of the visit so that a professional relationship can be built between your child and our dentist. The first appointment with the dentist is often kept simple in order to help your child slowly acclimatise to the dental clinic environment.

Our dentist will check all of your child’s existing teeth for decay, examine your child’s bite and look for any potential problems with their oral health and dental development.

Our dentist may also recommend low dose x-rays to be taken in order to assess decay.

Topics our dentist may discuss with you include

• Good oral hygiene practices and cavity prevention
• Non-nutritive sucking habits (e.g., thumb sucking, tongue thrusting, lip sucking)
• Developmental milestones
• Teething
• Proper nutrition

After this first visit, our dentist will suggest a schedule of follow-up visits based on your child’s overall dental health. For the average child with no major dental concerns, he/she will be recalled every 6 months so as to build the child’s comfort and confidence in visiting the dentist, to monitor the development of the teeth, and to promptly treat any developing problems.

During your child’s visits, the dentist will monitor their growth and dental development in order to ensure that your child is reaching his/her developmental milestones as expected.

The dentist will check whether all of your child’s baby and developing adult teeth are present and erupting into the mouth as planned.

The dentist will also look out for signs of a bad bite developing (e.g., crowding, under-bites and over-bites, crossbites) so that early intervention can be employed if necessary in order to prevent a more serious orthodontic problem in future.

Accidents can and do happen. If your child sustains trauma to their teeth, we advise that you contact our clinic as soon as possible once your child is assessed to be medically stable. We will provide you will the relevant advice and recommend that your child be assessed by a dentist as soon as possible. This is so as to ensure that your child’s tooth/teeth have not been displaced out of position and that any dental or soft injuries are addressed. The dentist may also take photographs and low dose x-rays in order to record and monitor the injured tooth/teeth over time.

If your child’s tooth has been knocked out, please refer to the following for important advice.