Health Over the Summer

With summer, extra fun and a looser routine can mean letting dental health fall to the wayside. Being out of school, kids sometimes have extra ac cess to snacking, and with bed times sometimes falling later, it can be easy to skip brush ing teeth, said Joni Richmond Stevens, a dentist and Gallatin Valley pediatric dentistry. BRUSH UP: MAINTAINING DENTAL HEALTH OVER THE SUMMER BY: ABBY LYNES

With summer, extra fun and a looser routine can mean letting dental health fall to the wayside. Being out of school, kids sometimes have extra access to snacking, and with bed times sometimes falling later, it can be easy to skip brush ing teeth, said Joni Richmond Stevens, a dentist at Gallatin Valley pediatric den tistry. It’s important to not let dental health fall by the wayside over the summer. With it staying light later, kids are often out play ing and adventuring later, and it’s a rush to get into bed. “I can speak from experience on that one,” she said. You just look at the time, and bedtime routines like brushing and flossing can get skipped. There’s also more snacking hap pening in the summer, especially with kids who have access to a pantry and food whenever they want. “The two combined can kind of gang up on teeth and cause some potential con cerns,” she said. To combat those concerns, Richmond Ste vens said it just comes down to education and planning. Parents should teach their kids what good choices, better choices and bad choices are when it comes to snacking. It also helps to make a plan. If you know it’s going to be a busy day, may be do a good brush and flossing routine in the morning. Or if your child is going to be going to a friend’s house after dinner and you don’t know if you’ll see them be fore sundown, have them brush their teeth before they go. There are some nights where it’s maybe just not going to happen. When those dental routines get skipped, Richmond Stevens said it’s good to make sure and brush and floss the next morning, and maybe have kids swish around some mouthwash to give their teeth an extra little boost the next morning. And while she doesn’t necessarily see more chipped teeth over the summer than other times of the year, those accidents do happen, often as a result of things like baseball, bikes and wrestling with friends. If kids are playing an active sport, she rec ommends always wearing a mouth guard. She also recommends talking to kids about dental trauma and what it looks like. It’s important to get on something like a bent back, chipped or completely removed tooth right away. “It can give parents a sense of calm, knowing a little more what they want to do before it happens,” she said.