Mini Mouths for Kids’ Teeth

Starting in 2020, Lily and her team of dentists and nurses began visiting schools to provide toothbrushes and toothpaste to children, along with plenty of tips on how to brush your teeth.

“I got the idea from a conversation with one of my friends who is a primary school teacher,” Lily explains. “There was a little boy in her class who cried each time he arrived at school. They couldn’t work out what was wrong.” After a while, the teacher came to an awful conclusion. “He was hungry,” Lily explains.

As the practice manager for Skipton Road Dental, she realised that if food is an issue in households, it is likely dental hygiene is extremely low on the list of priorities for those families and that buying a toothbrush or toothpaste is probably out of reach. So, instead, she decided to bring the tools to the children.

“We enjoy attending local schools, speaking to the children, providing them with the equipment and showing them how to brush using big models of teeth.” It’s important for Lily to show proper brushing methods early.

“In Pendle, the rate of children needing general anaesthetics to perform tooth extractions due to decay is incredibly high.”

“Adults come into the practice, and it can come across as patronising because we say next time, bring your brush, and we’ll show you how to brush your teeth. We never actually get shown. No one really tells us, and we’re seeing the effects of that lack of knowledge now in adults.”

She hopes that through proper education and equipped with the tools to do the job, children will be better prepared to look after their teeth and avoid problems down the line.

“In Pendle, the rate of children needing general anaesthetics to perform tooth extractions due to decay is incredibly high. Some children need full clearances because the decay has got so bad.”

Lily believes a total shift in mindset is necessary. “Society sees tooth decay as something easy to fix – if someone says a ten-year-old has to go and get a filling, we don’t think of that as bad, but we’ve allowed part of their body to decay that much that we need to intervene and put something false in there. It shouldn’t be something we consider normal.”

As well as a shift in mindset, Mini Mouths aims to educate parents as well as children. “We tend to do a parents’ class as well towards the end of the school day, and they can come and talk to the nurses and the dentists. You have parents who believe they are doing the right thing by giving children smoothies through a sippy cup each morning, then realise it is decaying their children’s teeth.”

Although the COVID lockdowns disrupted the scheme, so far, her team have given out a toothbrush and toothpaste to 500 local children through the help of charities, including the Rotary Club of Colne and The Cardboard Box Company, and she hopes to expand the scheme across Pendle to get more children brushing!

Contact reception@dentist-colne.co.uk for more information.

Lily’s Top Tips

1 Brush twice a day
2 Try a two-minute timer
3 Don’t rinse after brushing
4 Keep sweet treats to meal times
5 Don’t forget hidden sugars (tomato ketchup and fruit smoothies are big offenders!)

ColneLife March/April 24