One of the most important things you can do to prevent your child from having rotten teeth is to first take care of your own teeth.That was the message from Celia Nzabalinda, who heads the dental department at the Victoria Street clinic. February is Dental Health Month. This year the focus is on the dental health of pregnant women and young children.“If you want to reduce your child's chances of having decay, start off by taking care of your own teeth,” said Dr Nzabalinda. “What many people don't know is that dental diseases are contagious.”She said that bacteria involved in dental decay and dental disease can be passed on from parent or caregiver to child.The bacteria combined with poor dental hygiene practices, which caregivers also sometimes pass on, can lead to a faster rate of tooth decay and other dental problems for the child.“Dental researchers have found that if you find a parent that has very little decay you will usually find the child has very little decay,” said Dr Nzabalinda. “If the parent has a lot of decay, often, so will the child. There are a number of factors involved in that.“One very significant factor is the bacteria in the parent's mouth and thus in the child's mouth. If the child has a nanny with a lot of decay, sometimes that child will develop a lot of decay also.“If the nanny's hygiene is meticulous she can reduce her bacterial load, but as long as she has untreated decay she will have significant amounts of those bacteria in her mouth.”It is advocated that parents, and anyone with teeth they want to keep, brush for two minutes after breakfast and two minutes before going to bed and floss daily.“We also advocate that you don't snack a lot between meals because there is an acid attack process that goes on in the mouth,” said Dr Nzabalinda. “The bacteria that live in your mouth use the sugars that are in your diet as their nutrition.“As a byproduct they excrete acid and that acid softens the enamel of the teeth.“Everyone has a brief period of acidity after they eat a meal, but your mouth quickly returns to an alkaline state.“Your ph returns to normal relatively quickly unless you keep snacking.“If you eat your meal and have something else half an hour later, and something more half an hour later you never allow your mouth to return to the alkaline state.“There are a number of factors involved including bacteria, hygiene, plaque and frequency of sugar exposure. For periodontal disease it is mostly the hygiene of things that is critical.”Dr Nzabalinda said the various dental associations also advocated that a baby be breastfed, exclusively, for the first six months of life.“Exclusively means no other food,” said Dr Nzabalinda. “Water is not even necessary although it won't cause cavities.“Breast milk has everything that a child needs. When the time comes that the mother decides to introduce other foods, they should begin to introduce a schedule so that they minimise the frequency of sugar exposure for the teeth.“Most food has sugars in it. You want to begin spreading out a child's feeding schedule once you introduce other foods so that there is a gap between feedings and the mouth has a chance to return to its alkaline state.“Around that time the child will have teeth as well. Of course, the child's mouth needs to be cleaned.”She said that if a child is bottle-fed it is strongly recommended that they do not go to sleep with a bottle in their mouth because the milk pools while they sleep.“That acid attack will take place all night long,” she said. “When they go to sleep with a bottle they don't swallow everything.“If a mother is going to feed a child before they go to sleep, we recommend that they clean the child's mouth out before they go to sleep.”It is also recommended that the child's first visit to the dentist be around their first birthday.“The first visit is usually information sharing and familiarising the child with the office,” said Dr Nzabalinda. “We familiarise them with counting their teeth, and opening big and wide and looking at the model.“They get the idea of what it is we want to do. They also take toothbrushes home.“Generally, we try to make it a fun experience. And we share information with the parent to make sure they have preventive dental practices in place.“The parent should be encouraging and positive, and let the child feel that this will be something that is kind of fun.“Some children won't respond to that, as hard as you may try, but you should still go ahead and have the visit done, just as you would still go to the physician even if the child didn't want to go.“They will need a dental checkup every six months. At that age it is usually a relatively short visit, and generally they don't have cleanings done, although we might use a toothbrush to use a cleaning.”Various dental organisations such as the American Dental Association frown on children drinking juice from sippy cups.This is because children have the habit of drinking a little, playing and then coming back to drink some more, thereby keeping the acid levels in their mouth high.“For children who are introduced to a sippy cup, that child should not receive juice in the sippy cup or juice at all in their diet until they are old enough to hold a regular cup themselves and are able to drink the juice from a cup,” Dr Nzabalinda said. “Juice is high in sugar content because it is concentrated fruit without the fibre.“It tends to replace other foods that the child should be receiving. It can be highly decay causing.”For more information visit www.aapd.org/pediatricinformation/faq.asp.