Taking Care of Permanent Teeth

Typically, your child will begin to develop permanent teeth under the gums around age 3 and will start to erupt around age 6. When the permanent teeth have fully erupted, your child will have up to 32 teeth, including 4 wisdom teeth—that’s a lot of teeth to keep clean!

Eating the right foods can help ensure your child has a healthy mouth AND a healthy body. Keep foods such as cheese, fruits, vegetables, water, eggs, and sugarless gum available so your child can snack on them often.

If your child does eat snacks high in sugar or carbohydrates, which turn into sugar, like chips, crackers, and cereals, give your child a piece of cheese, vegetables, an apple, or sugar-free gum afterwards if they can’t brush right way.

Keep juice to a minimum and save soda for special treats only because they are very high in sugar as well (even diet sodas can harm our teeth!).

Along with eating the right foods, ensure the last thing your child does before going to sleep is brush and floss their teeth. After that, your child should only drink water to make sure there are no sugars on the teeth during sleep.