Healthy Habits Tips from a Family Dentist, Marieve Rodriguez DMD, in Delaware

As a family dentist in Delaware, Marieve Rodriguez DMD is in a unique and privileged position to treat many of your family dental issues for generations. This means we get to visit with you, get to know you, and build a rapport with your children as they come in for their early life examinations. It also puts us in a great position to be able to help your family spend less time having their teeth treated by developing great habits and learning how to best protect teeth at home. Great habits begin in the home, passed on from generation to generation by parents. We want to make sure that your children are learning the best habits possible so that they will only need to come see us a few times per year for an annual cleaning or checkup. It isn’t that we don’t want to see you, but our preference is to have our families have healthy strong teeth that only require minimal interventions from us.

As a family dentist in Delaware, Marieve Rodriguez DMD prefers to get involved in your child’s dental care as soon as possible, which in many cases means as soon as you are ready and comfortable. The sooner we can see a child, the more ability we have to work with you in creating a game plan for their future development. This also allows us to catch any potential challenges early so that they can be dealt with. Perhaps the most important thing that an early childhood dental visit does is to establish a trusting relationship between us, the family dentist, and the child. This is especially important when the parents are afraid of the dentist themselves, as they will more often than not pass on this fear. Once a child knows who we are and trusts us to deal with whatever issues they are having in the mouth, we can fix any problems far easier.

A complaint we frequently hear  from parents, especially new parents, is how hard it is to get their children to brush their teeth. We, as your family dentist, will work to reinforce this idea as you bring the children in for their checkups and well visits. However, there is much to be said for the idea of imitation. One piece of advice, that we always share with parents, is this – children are born imitators who do much of their learning, and habit forming, by imitating the behaviors they see from their parents. If your child sees you taking good care of your teeth, brushing twice per day and using floss, chances are high that the child will want to imitate your actions and this will make your life much easier when teaching them the importance of daily brushing. Another tip that parents can pass along is to make it fun. Children do not like to do things that do not have any entertainment value, much less if it is something they have to do. Incorporating elements of fantasy and story time are two great ways to make tooth brushing a fun exercise that they will want to participate in. As a family dentist in Delaware, Marieve Rodriguez DMD suggests making the toothbrush a hero and the germs the villain for a crime fighting, fun, teeth brushing experience.