Some Dental Fun Facts For Kids
Educating children about having healthy teeth doesn’t have to be boring!
Any parent will want the best for their children, and that includes having great looking and healthy teeth. No parent wants to see their child suffer with toothache, and, in most cases, this can be fairly easily avoided.
Whilst we need to supervise our kids whilst they brush their teeth, it is also a good idea to get them thinking about their own teeth from an early stage, encouraging them to take at least some responsibility for their care.
Of course, a key part of their oral health care will be to see the children’s dentist at our Greenwich practice on a regular basis. Ongoing monitoring of growing teeth is especially important and can determine a number of factors as they develop from children into adults.
Education - don’t make them yawn!
The chances are that if you try to sit your children down to discuss their teeth, they will become easily distracted, seeing it as yet another thing they are supposed to do, but don’t want to. Along with .. ‘wash your hands’, ‘tidy your room’ and other instructions which most of us can probably remember being told ourselves.
If you can add a bit of fun into the discussion, you are probably more likely to find that the information you hand out is better received. With this in mind, here are some fun facts that kids will probably find fascinating.
Humans will have approximately 50 teeth during their entire lifetime. Some other creatures get through many more, for example some sharks almost continuously replace their teeth, some even doing so a row at a time. Some types of shark can get through as many as 30,000 teeth in their lifetime!
Have you ever wondered why we don’t scratch our teeth when they come into contact with a metal fork? The reality is that teeth are actually stronger than steel. Unfortunately, they are also more brittle and will break, unlike metal.
Whilst we should always try not to develop holes in our teeth, some snakes already have holes in theirs. This is where they shoot venom from to capture their prey.
If we pulled out everybody’s teeth in the world today, and spread them on the ground, it would cover an area approximately 1 million kilometres, very roughly the size of Egypt.
If we lose a grown up tooth now, we can have it replaced by a denture or dental implant. People were not so lucky in the past though, and early false teeth were made of wood!!
These are just a few fun facts that patients of the Confidental Clinic can tell their children, sneaking in a few ‘clean your teeth’ hints too. Taking care of young children’s teeth is something that we take seriously and we do encourage parents to bring their children to see us from a young age, in fact, ideally from around one year old.
If you have a child and would like to make an appointment for them, please contact the Confidental Clinic in Greenwich on 020 8858 1422.