If your child is sipping all day, they will soon experience tooth decay. It doesn’t matter where you live because all kids love sugary drinks, and I will bet that the vast majority of kids have already had a sugary drink today already. Unfortunately, children nowadays suffer from obesity, diabetes, and weight gain due to their high-fat diets and their high reliance on high sugar soft drinks. It’s the boys that usually come out on top when it comes to enjoying soda and juice, but it is only marginally less for the girls.
When you give your child a sugary soda to drink, this same sugar reacts with the bacteria in their mouth to form an acid that attacks their teeth. If you think switching to sugar-free soda is going to help you out, you would be sadly mistaken. Even sugar-free sodas have acids that will attack your children’s teeth every single time, and their teeth are under attack for at least 20 minutes every single time.
What Your Dentist Can Do
If this is useful news to you and you’re worried that your child’s teeth may be in danger, then it’s time that you made an appointment with a North Shore pediatric dentist or a dentist in your local area. There are two things that they will check for. First, they will check for the erosion that occurs when the acid in soft drinks reacts with the tooth enamel on your children’s teeth. It reduces the hardness of the enamel and that can have a detrimental effect. Your dentist will also check for cavities. These develop over a period of time with children who drink sugary drinks on a regular basis. If they are not brushing their teeth regularly, even more damage can occur.
There are ways to prevent damage to your children’s teeth and here are some of them:
- Encourage your child to drink in moderation – Everything needs to be enjoyed in moderation. As a parent, you need to draw a line in the sand and put your foot down when it comes to the number of soft drinks that your child can drink in only one day. It doesn’t matter how much they cry or pout. You have to stick to your guns and insist that they enjoy a glass of water if they are that thirsty. Try to restrict your child to only one soft drink a day and even that is more than enough to cause damage to the teeth.
- Have them drink the juice quickly – This may seem like bad advice from a parent. However, the longer that your child takes to consume a soft drink, the more time the acid can have its effect on their teeth. If they drink the soda more quickly, the acid has less time to damage the teeth. Make sure your child doesn’t use this as an opportunity to consume more juice, just because it helps to reduce the damaging effects.
- Provide them with a straw – This should be fairly easy to put in place because kids love to have a straw when they are enjoying their soda or juice. Typically, when you take them out to a coffee shop or restaurant, they provide straws there. When coming back home, straws are not readily available. Maybe it’s time you bought a box of colored straws for use in the home as this will help to reduce the damaging effects of acid and sugar on their teeth.
These are just three ways to help reduce the damage that soda and juice is causing to your children’s teeth. Always encourage your child to rinse their mouth with some clean water afterward and try to encourage them to brush their teeth more often.
