How to Floss

At Ironwood Dental, we are strong advocates of the benefits of teaching your children the healthy life habit of flossing after brushing their teeth. But as a parent you might be wondering, “How do I help my young children learn to floss when they are too small to floss on their own? And what do my older children need to know to effectively floss by themselves?”

For quick answers to questions about your children’s oral health needs, or to set up a dental appointment with one of our Scottsdale pediatric dentists, you can ask us online or call us at (480) 422-4544.

Why Your Children Should Floss

The reason why your children should floss after brushing their teeth—and why you should, too—is simple: regular brushing alone is not enough to keep your teeth clean and safe from harmful bacteria, cavities, gum disease and bad breath. It is not that toothbrushing is ineffective, but it is not completely effective, either. There are a few reasons for this.

First, although your child’s toothbrush will suffice to remove plaque and food from most of the surfaces of the teeth, it cannot reach all of them. Two places where a toothbrush will often leave behind plaque and food particles are on the surfaces in between the teeth and along and just underneath the gums.

Second, plaque is a sticky film that can resist the bristles of a toothbrush. Flossing removes residual plaque before it can harden into tartar. This is important because once tartar forms on your child’s teeth, especially underneath the gums, neither brushing or flossing will remove it. Only a professional teeth cleaning by your child’s dentist can clean away tartar once it takes hold.

When to Start Flossing

A good time to start flossing your child’s teeth is when their baby teeth have erupted enough in number and development that they begin to touch one another. This commonly takes place around the age of two, with the emergence of the molars.

What Kind of Floss to Use

You have multiple options to choose from when choosing what kind of floss to use for your children. Here are some considerations for each.

Dental Floss

You can use standard floss or waxed floss with your children’s teeth and gums. Some children’s flosses are flavored to make them more appealing. The main potential drawback to using regular floss is that it requires you and later your child to place fingers into small mouths during flossing, and this can be uncomfortable for small children.

Dental Picks

Dental picks, also known as floss picks or pre-threaded flossers, consist of brackets on one end and a handle on the other. The brackets hold a strand of floss. Floss picks are often easier to use than regular floss because they do not require reaching into your child’s mouth with fingers. Children’s floss picks can also be flavored to increase their appeal. Care should be used with floss picks, because it is possible to apply too much force when using them, and this can cause trauma to gum tissue.

Water Flossers

One alternative to traditional flossing is to use an electric or battery-powered water flosser that shoots a jet of water through a nozzle. These devices can be effective for removing leftover food particles in hard-to-reach spaces like in between teeth. A water flosser can make flossing easier compared to regular flossing because it does not require placing fingers in the mouth. But when it comes to removing plaque, these devices are not as effective as dental floss.

Child Flossing Techniques

When your children are small, you must floss their teeth for them. Here are the proper technique steps to take to floss correctly.

1. Wash your hands. You will be placing your fingers in your child’s mouth, you will want them to be clean.
2. Secure a few inches of floss to use. This can be about 18 inches in length.
3. Wind most of the length of the floss around one of your middle fingers. We will call this your “clean middle finger” from now on.
4. Wrap the other end of the length of floss around your other middle finger. We will call this the “dirty middle finger.”
5. When you have finished steps 3 and 4, there should be about two inches of floss between your middle fingers.
6. Next, while holding the approximately two inches of floss at each end between your index fingers and thumbs of both hands, floss gently by positioning the floss in between two of your child’s teeth. Do this by using a gentle rubbing motion as you guide the floss between the teeth.
7. When the floss reaches your child’s gum line, hold the floss taut around one of the teeth, in a c-shape, and then use an up-and-down motion to rub the floss tightly against the tooth to remove plaque. Then do the same with the tooth on the other side.
8. Each time after you clean the surface of a tooth, unspool a little of the floss wrapped around your clean middle finger, and wrap the floss you just used to clean with around the dirty middle finger. Then grasp the floss between your thumbs and index fingers again and start the process again. This ensures that you will not simply be transferring plaque and bacteria between the surfaces of the teeth, but will be using fresh floss for each tooth.
9. Repeat steps 6 through 8 for each tooth until you have flossed them all.