Do you let your children take their favorite cup to bed at night? Is it filled with milk, juice or another sugary drink? Does your child throw a fit if you don’t let them take a drink to bed? Once you let your child take a sweet drink to bed, your child’s teeth are at risk. Now is the time to transition them to water if they must take a drink to bed. When sugary drinks sit on teeth all night the bacteria feeds off of it creating enamel eating acid. This is one of the contributing factors to your children getting cavities. Although milk isn’t as sugary as juice, it can begin rotting the teeth over time if milk sits on them all night. Leaving the bottle or non-spill cup in the bed is also dangerous for the teeth. Once children have teeth they can potentially spend parts of the night chewing or sucking on the bottle, which shifts around their teeth.
Tips & Tricks
- After children brush their teeth they shouldn’t consume anything but water, if they do eat or drink anything else, especially with sugar in it they should brush their teeth again.
- If your child wants water at night they should have a nightstand to set it on. Once a child has teeth, nighttime chewing and sucking can misalign their teeth. This makes it more likely that your child will need braces in the future.
- It’s important to start a healthy routine of only water if your child insists on taking a drink to bed. This is a difficult habit to break once children grow up.
P.S.
Aside from the concern of cavities from nightly bottle usage there are a few other reasons to wean your baby off of the bottle by the age of one. If your child continues to only drink milk out of their bottle they will not get the necessary nutrients from other foods that they need to be strong and healthy. Another problem associated with the bottle past the age of one is too much milk. This can lead to childhood obesity due to the extra and unnecessary caloric intake.
It’s important to take care of your children’s teeth while they are young which means practicing good oral health routines like brushing, flossing, rinsing, and visiting a dentist regularly. Let us examine your kid’s teeth every six months to make sure they are clean, healthy and strong.