Juice for toddlers

[Pickle]

Having grown up in a country where the water has fluoride added, my teeth were in great shape... until about 3 years after moving to the UK when suddenly the enamel started wearing away and generally loads of problems started cropping up. If flouride helps teeth stay strong and healthy I'm all for it! I now have white fillings on my front teeth which I hate (although thankfully they're not too obvious).

[melbourne groover]

We have had great success with a flashing light toothbrush (bought on Ocado but sure other supermarkets do it). My son is now up for the disco in his mouth (as opposed to me holding him down and brushing as his other option).

[civilservant]

Junior Civilservant has some decay - partly because of dodgy dental genes and partly because I was too soft to insist on proper toothbrushing twice a day when she wasn't cooperative in her younger days.

Now she eats sweeties in moderation - once a week- and drinks water as often as juice and brushes with the expensive Sensodyne toothpaste that's supposed to reduce tooth erosion, but strong sense of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted

My dentist also blamed prolonged breastfeeding! She said that bm is very high in sugars and is a prime cause of tooth decay in littl'uns.

Whatever... I'm not sorry I bf-ed till she was 2. Got to weigh up the risks and benefits!

I second Fuschia's warning about orange juice - gave Junior Civilservant cystitis (i.e. painful wees) until quite recently.

[susyp]

interesting thread as i have been giving my daughter loads of juice to make her drink but will cut back - she has calcium added oj as is milk allergic so i figure that is ok. Plus having had breast cancer recently = personally i couldn;t really give a damm about my own teeth - fruit and veg have to be the way to go regardless of how they go in - have heard that it should be ten a day not five a day too. So keen to get my daughter (who won;t eat veg at the mo) to love fruit ( she does) . Everything is bad for you in excess I guess.

susypx

[civilservant]

just remembered that cheese, being alkaline, is good for neutralising fruit acids and the calcium in cheese boosts the teeth too - and also see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2076251

I don't think I need to remind anyone that cheese+apple, cheese+grapes, cheese+tomatoes (and cheese+wine!) are all winning combos!

[littleEDfamily]

ooooh, yes, cheese and chutney is my personal fave.

[Maki]

My mum is a dentist 2 days a week and the rest of the week is an Oral health promoter, and she is tooth obsessed!! I have had so much advise from her it's quite nice to see a thread where I can use it a bit!

Basically, juice that you can freshly squeeze yourself is much better than shop bought juice as the sugars have been less processed and therefore not as corrosive to the baby teeth. However, it's best if you do have to give a child juice to give it with food, and as others have mentioned not to brush the teeth for a good hour afterwards.

The baby molars are so soft and they decay much faster than adult teeth so this is why it's important to clean them properly. We battle every night too, but even if I can't brush them all properly I always make sure that the molars have been cleaned at least.

Some tips my mum has given me (which have worked intermittently), is to let your toddler clean your teeth and then you swap. This can be quite fun but also shows how intrusive it can feel to them! The trick that works best for us is I clean Ayla's teeth for 5 seconds then she sucks her toothbrush for 5 seconds and on and on we go!!

Other things my mum has said is that the latest thinking is that it's best not to rinse the toothpaste off the teeth (goes for adults and babies), as the fluoride is good for the teeth. She recommends that you use an adult toothpaste. Her personal fav is Pronamel.

And I hate to be the bearer of bad news but my mum and my dentist have both said that raisins are a really bad idea as they are sugary and sticky and perfect size for getting stuck in the molar crevice for periods of time.

I have to admit though that I still give Ayla raisins as it's such an easy snack and she loves them....just don't tell my mum!! ha ha

[Helen GV]

since reading this thread I've been giving mainly water to my toddler who is surprisingly not objecting! am sad about the raisins though, they always work as a distraction in the pram to head off tantrums...