How much do infants and children know about oral health care myths?

       With the improvement of living standards and health care awareness, some parents have started to pay attention to their children’s oral health care in addition to their babies’ physical growth and development. Then, there are still many wrong concepts and behaviors about the oral health care of infants and children, and these often lead to and even aggravate the bad oral health care habits of children, so as to seriously endanger the dental health of babies.  1.The milk teeth are to be replaced and the caries need not be treated Often, we often hear this view and many parents have this idea, but this view is wrong. When the decay of milk teeth appears, it should be treated as early as possible. Some parents are afraid that their children are small and can’t cooperate, so it often makes the caries develop further and leads to pulp (dental nerve) inflammation and periapical inflammation of teeth, which causes more harm and pain. From the child’s few months of tooth eruption to 3 years old, the decayed milk teeth can be treated perfectly by the pediatric dentist.  2.Children can brush their teeth by themselves and do not need adult’s help.  Generally, you should clean your child’s mouth from the first tooth eruption; after one week old, you should start to brush your child’s teeth with a toothbrush; after 3 weeks old, you should start to use toothpaste. Because of the limited behavioral ability of children during infancy and toddlerhood and the fact that brushing teeth is a fine action, children cannot achieve the effect of cleaning their teeth by brushing their teeth alone. Parents should clean their children’s teeth during infancy and toddlerhood and even throughout the preschool years.  3, breast teeth backbite does not need to be corrected immediately, and wait for 12 years old teeth are replaced before treatment is not too late.  The backbite has two main effects, one is to affect the development of the upper jaw, so that its development is limited, affecting the facial shape, affecting the aesthetics; the second is to have a negative impact on the temporomandibular joint, laying a hidden danger for the occurrence of adult temporomandibular joint disease. When the milk teeth are fully erupted, as long as the child can cooperate with the doctor, the treatment of the teeth backbite should be carried out as early as possible, the earlier the treatment effect the better.  4, the child is not easy to sleep, containing the bottle to sleep is a good method of hypnosis.  Sleeping with milk bottle, the liquid in the bottle will soak around the teeth, which becomes an excellent culture medium for cariogenic bacteria in the mouth; in addition, the carbohydrates in the liquid of milk bottle will be decomposed by bacteria to produce acid, erode the teeth, make the teeth demineralized and dissolved, and form carious teeth.  Clinically, many serious cases of infant caries have the history of sleeping with milk bottle, and the milk bottle is often formula milk, sugar water, autumn pear cream water, etc. It can be seen that sleeping with milk bottle is a kind of bad feeding habit which is harmful, don’t give your child such habit, once you have such habit, you should change it completely and as soon as possible.  5, the baby’s milk teeth will not have problems, do not need oral examination.  The first oral examination for infants and children should be after the first tooth erupts, at the latest before 12 months. Because, through oral examination, we can know whether the child has bad feeding habits, whether there is early oral disease damage, and prevent the problem before it happens. At the early stage of caries appearance.  In addition, there is no obvious change on the surface of the teeth, and it is difficult for parents to detect it by themselves. If there is no regular examination, tooth decay often develops to late stage and will be discovered only when there are obvious symptoms, but then the best time for treatment has been missed and the child suffers a lot of pain.  To help children protect their dental health in infancy and early childhood, we need to help children establish good brushing habits as early as possible, take children to dental clinics or hospitals regularly for comprehensive dental examination and cleaning, and adopt the principle of “early detection, early intervention and early treatment” for dental caries.