Plenty of parents use little tricks to persuade young ones to eat their vegetables, wash their hands, or get to bed on time. But when actress Jennie Garth wanted to help her kids develop healthy dental habits, she took it a step further, as she explained in a recent interview on Fox News.

“Oh my gosh, there's a froggy in your teeth!” the star of the '90s hit series Beverly Hills 90210 would tell her kids. “I've got to get him out!”

When her children — daughters Luca, Lola, and Fiona — spit out the toothpaste, Garth would surreptitiously slip a small toy frog into the sink and pretend it had come from one of their mouths. This amused the kids so much that they became engaged in the game, and let her brush their teeth for as long as necessary.

Garth's certainly got the right idea. Teaching children to develop good oral hygiene habits as early as possible helps set them up for a lifetime of superior dental health. Parents should establish a brushing routine with their kids starting around age 2, when the mouth is becoming filled with teeth. A soft, child's size toothbrush with a pea-sized dab of fluoride toothpaste and plenty of parental help is good for toddlers. By around age 6, when they've developed more manual dexterity, the kids can start taking over the job themselves.

Here's another tip: It's easy to find out how good a cleaning job your kids are doing on their own teeth. Over-the counter products are available that use a system of color coding to identify the presence of bacterial plaque. With these, you can periodically check whether children are brushing effectively. Another way of checking is less precise, but it works anywhere: Just teach them to run their tongue over their teeth. If the teeth fell nice and smooth, they're probably clean, too. If not... it's time to pull out the frog.

And don't forget about the importance of regular dental checkups — both for your kids and yourself. “Like anything, I think our kids mirror what we do,” says Garth. We couldn't agree more.

If you need more information about helping kids develop good oral hygiene — or if it's time for a checkup — don't hesitate to contact us and schedule an appointment. You can learn more in the Dear Doctor magazine article “How to Help Your Child Develop the Best Habits for Oral Health.”

You may think the structures of your face and mouth stop growing when you reach adulthood. That's not true: your skeletal structure, facial features and soft tissues continue to change all through your life, even into old age. In fact, there's as much change from ages 25 to 42 as there is from ages 18 to 25. This fact of continuous growth and change affects the approaches we may take to satisfy your oral and dental needs.

We should especially consider facial changes due to aging as a factor when planning orthodontic treatment. For example, as we age the profile of our face will tend to flatten, which makes our nose become more prominent (and, yes, our noses continue to grow longer as we grow older). A good plan will take advantage of this, especially during expected growth spurts such as right before puberty. As the position of the patient's bite improves through treatment, the continuing growth of their facial profile will continue to bring the angle of the jaw into a more aesthetic position.

Likewise, where there are multiple issues with the mouth and face, orthodontics can be employed with other treatments such as rhinoplasty, the surgical improvement to the shape of the nose, or orthognathic surgery, procedures that correct problems associated with the position and structure of the lower jaw. As we employee these techniques, we keep in mind that the mouth and face are essentially a “moving target” — that is, they will continue to move in the direction of change due to aging. We coordinate the outcomes of treatment to eventually meet up with that eventual growth.

Armed with an understanding of how change occurs during aging, we can coordinate these procedures into a well-timed strategy that actually takes advantage of the aging process. The end result is a more favorable aesthetic appearance for the long-term.

If you would like more information on how aging can affect your dental health and treatment options, please contact us or schedule an appointment for a consultation. You can also learn more about this topic by reading the Dear Doctor magazine article “Understanding Aging Makes Beauty Timeless.”