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Mum Diary: Is That A HOLE In My Child's Tooth?!

A trip to the dentist leaves our mum blogger wincing and worried that all other parents will think she's failing at motherhood...…

Oh the shame. Oh the shock. Oh the crippling feeling of failure when I spotted it, that missing bit of tooth at the back of my three-year-old son Harry’s mouth.

We were cleaning his teeth with his new Spiderman brush when I suddenly realised there was a small chunk of back tooth missing, a tiny chink in the enamel.

The shock, the horror, when I thought I spotted a hole in my son's tooth [Rex]
The shock, the horror, when I thought I spotted a hole in my son's tooth [Rex]



Harry unconcernedly carried on doing his tiger impression (we roar during teeth time, so I can get to the back of my boys’ mouths. Bedtime is pretty noisy in our house) and I cheerfully pretended nothing was wrong, telling him I was “just getting Daddy to see how loud your roar is”.

Well, his dad checked out his mouth and gave me a grave look – it was definitely a hole. I felt dreadful.

I thought I had been really good about teeth and limiting sugar and it turned out that I was just as bad as those mothers who give their babies cola in their bottles (is that real, do you think, or did the media make it up?) because here was my beautiful three-year-old with his brand-new teeth and I had allowed them to rot.

The trouble with teeth is that you can’t just quietly hope no one else notices, you have to take the child to the dentist so that they can judge you for your inadequate parenting too. Okay, perhaps I am being a little over the top, but that was genuinely how I felt. I felt like I had failed.

I'm careful that my children have a healthy diet, but everything has sugar in it nowadays [Rex]
I'm careful that my children have a healthy diet, but everything has sugar in it nowadays [Rex]

And the internet agreed. The various parenting forums were full of distressed mums and dads asking why their children had decay and being answered by smug mums and dads saying: “Because you are not trying hard enough.”

Some parents explained that their children rarely eat sweets but are allowed to drink orange juice, and the online response was so acidic that it could have destroyed a milk tooth in moments.

“Orange juice? Do you have ANY IDEA how much sugar is in orange juice?” raged one reply. Really, the parent who posted the question might as well have been confessing to filling their baby’s tippee cup with lager for the response they got.

Look After Their Smile
Our dentist is very pleasant and booked Harry in for an urgent appointment just a week later. He wouldn’t go on the ‘uppydowny chair’ but sat on my knee and treated the dentist to his very best bear roar (it’s verrry slightly quieter than the tiger or lion roar and so it seemed most appropriate).

“Ah ha, I can see it,” said the dentist above the sound of an angry grizzly. “Yes… Okay…”

She straightened up and I braced myself. “That’s a chip,” she said, reassuringly.

“What?” I said, distracted by the sight of one-year-old Olly attempting to scale the uppydowny chair and being grabbed by the dental nurse.

“Yes, that’s not decay, that’s a chip. You can tell by the position. He’s damaged his tooth on something,” she explained, smiling in polite bewilderment at the sight of me nearly crying with relief.

Even most bread has sugar in it, the dentist warned [Rex]
Even most bread has sugar in it, the dentist warned [Rex]

“I thought I’d wrecked his teeth,” I gasped and she shook her head.

“Even if it was a hole, that wouldn’t mean you’ve done something terrible,” she commented. “I get loads of parents in here with children who have decay; it’s very easily done. There’s sugar in everything now, even bread."

Her polite but firm tone made it clear that she thought I was overreacting, so I straightened myself up and helped Harry and Olly choose a sticker each.

A Hole Lot Of Problems
Away from the dentist, I got a bit more perspective about Toothgate, helped by the fact that Harry won’t need any treatment on his chip; we are simply to leave it and keep it clean.

The fact is that children’s teeth do suffer from our high sugar diets. The results of the 2013 Children’s Dental Health Survey for England, Wales and Northern Ireland came out last month, showing that almost half of eight-year-olds and a third of five-year-olds have signs of decay in their milk teeth – although that was a fall compared to previous surveys.

Poverty seems to play a part, but only a small one. A sizable portion of all pre-schoolers have trouble with their teeth but it’s so taboo that no one can talk about it.

Even if you do everything right, and invest in all the top oral hygiene products, problems still crop up [Rex]
Even if you do everything right, and invest in all the top oral hygiene products, problems still crop up [Rex]

In the week it took to get Harry in for an appointment, I told no one about the hole.

I have friends that I have discussed every aspect of parenting with, from the disgusting contents of a newborn’s nappy to Harry’s recent trick of yelling out weirdly inappropriate words in public (“Potato masher!” “Poo!”). But I could not tell anyone about the tooth.

To be honest, I probably wouldn’t even be writing this blog about it if the hole had turned out to be the result of decay. And that is stupid, because we need to talk about our children’s oral health if we are going to share tips on cleaning recalcitrant toddlers’ teeth, or helping a young child cope with getting a filling.

Try and get in the habit of brushing your child's teeth from a young age [Rex]
Try and get in the habit of brushing your child's teeth from a young age [Rex]

Decay doesn’t mean you’re a rubbish parent who never brushes. It could mean that your child eats a lot of fruit, it might mean that they refuse to open their mouths fully or that the brush makes them gag. It might just be because there’s a lot of sugar in every shop-bought toddler snack, even the ones branded as a healthy choice.

It’s time to talk about teeth and toddlers, without the taboo.

What do you think? Have your children needed fillings? How did you manage? Has our mum blogger got a point? Have your say using the comments below.

[Shocking Stats Reveal HALF Of Eight-Year-Old Children Have Fillings Or Missing Teeth]

[Mum Diary: My Worst Day As A Parent]