Dr. Malley Celebrates National Children’s Dental Health Month

In honor of National Children’s Dental Health Month, our staff at Carolina Kids Dentistry, a Mint Hill pediatric dentistry practice, is speaking to children at schools in the area about the importance of healthy snacks and good oral hygiene.

NCDHM is sponsored annually by the American Dental Association and is designed to raise awareness about the importance of oral health.

Mint Hill pediatric dentist Dr. Bevin Malley and her staff are speaking to students in kindergarten through second grade, and giving the students toothbrushes and toothpaste.

“It’s important to share this information because it promotes good oral hygiene,” Dr. Malley says. “Our main goal in pediatric dentistry is prevention.”

As a parent, you may not be sure about when to start your child’s first dental visit. Perhaps you are unaware of the importance of primary teeth- also called baby teeth- in your child’s development. But 12 of your child’s 20 primary teeth are present until age 11 to 12, so we reach out to young children to get them thinking about good versus bad snacks and reinforcing the importance of good oral hygiene, says Dr. Malley, a Mint Hill dentist.

Dr. Malley’s clinical care coordinator, Ashley, gets creative in her presentations by bringing a magnet board shaped like a tooth. The bad snacks stick to the tooth, showing cavity-causing effects, while the healthy snacks fall away.

We expect that by the end of February, we will have shared our educational presentation with  close to 1,500 students in our community.

If you would like to learn more about National Children’s Dental Health Month, visit the American Dental Association’s website: www.ada.org.