Cavities

If you don’t want your kids to have any cavities, it’s relatively easy to do your part: Just limit candy, frosted cereals, cookies, raisins, and anything else that’s sticky and sugary. With toddlers, avoid feeding throughout the night; both bottle feeding and breast feeding from dusk till dawn increase the risk. Feeding before bed, however, doesn’t significantly increase the risk of cavities.



Your second line of defense, of course, is oral hygiene: regular brushing and flossing, especially when the kids get older and more coordinated. Dentists believe fluoride supplementation in small amounts has some preventive effects. But that’s about all you can do to help your kids keep their teeth healthy. You can’t eliminate genetic predisposition, which is unfortunately one of the main factors that determine enamel fragility. Regular visits to the dentist starting in the second year of age will detect early predisposition and help treat cavities before they get worse.