How to Create Greater Oral Health for the Whole Family!

As parents we always want the best for our children.  This especially applies for those of us where were raised on Twinkies and Lucky Charms.  We want to provide our kids the very best start especially if we feel we may not have had the best nutritional start ourselves.

When it comes to raising our awareness of oral health as a family, we quickly come to the realization that what we as parents model with our own oral hygiene routine will become the example for our kid’s oral hygiene.  And we understand that oral health is not achieved or maintained by the simple acts of brushing and flossing alone.  For if brushing and flossing created oral health, would 90% of adults and 65% of 15 year olds have signs of active gum disease?

Wouldn’t you agree that children learn best from watching how we go about our lives?  The axiom ‘do as I say, not as I do’ comes to mind as support for this idea.

Therefore, the very best thing we can do to improve the oral health for everyone in our family is to take control of our own oral health.  By modeling how to care for our own oral health, we lead by example, which we all know is the very best way our children learn from us.

If we had to pick just one health oral care routine, that would be to floss consciously.

What is conscious flossing?

We have coined the term conscious flossing to mean bringing our awareness and attention to a routine habit like flossing.  By bringing awareness to flossing we can learn much about what is going on in our mouths, which can have a huge impact on our ability to create greater oral health.

Here’s how to floss consciously.

1.  Take a piece of floss that is long enough so you can use a new segment of floss between each set of teeth.

2.  Stop and look at the floss after each flossing point.  Look for any discoloration on the floss.  Any color (blood or yellowish color) is a clear sign you have active infection in the gum pockets around those teeth.

3. Step three requires some courage, so be strong!   Smell the floss.  Yep, smell it after each contact you clean.

4.  Feel as you floss for any pain, sensitivity or signs of swelling.

Bottom line here is if you have any color on the floss (bleeding gums) or bad small, you have an active infection in the gum pockets between those two teeth.  And yes, if you have any contacts that smelled, they do contribute to the smell your partner has come to recognize as normal.  It does not have to be this way!

If you really want to take your oral health to the next level, download our OraWellness Mouth Map for free by following this link.

Fill out the OraWellness Mouth Map with what you find from your conscious flossing and keep it as a record.  By having a dated record of the spots in your mouth that bled when flossed or had a bad smell, you can KNOW whether your oral health is improving or if you are losing the battle to the bad bugs that cause gum disease.

Once your kids see Mom and/or Dad floss consciously, they will begin to do the same.  Then everyone in the family will have a better understanding of how to create greater oral in their own life.

Win/win for all!!!