All
parents quickly learn one thing about their children: Sickness is inevitable.
And sick children miss school. Although asthma is sometimes cited as the most
common childhood disease, the actual leader, according to the National
Institutes of Health, is dental caries. More than four in 10 school-aged
children suffer from caries; that means your child is more than five times more
likely to have caries than to develop asthma.
Early
tooth loss caused by dental decay can lead to a wide range of problems:
*failure
to thrive
*impaired
speech development
*absence
from and inability to concentrate in school
*reduced
self-esteem
Dental
problems in children have been linked to shyness, unhappiness, feelings of
worthlessness and reduced friendliness. These effects grow as children get
older; unhappiness and feeling of worthlessness peak for adolescents between 15
and 17 years.
Studies
have suggested that children miss more than 1.7 million school days annually
due to dental issues. And children who miss school don’t do as well socially or
academically as do children with regular school attendance. Children with
dental problems are more likely to have problems at school and less likely to
do all their homework. Children suffering from a toothache cannot concentrate
on their schoolwork and do not score as well on tests as do healthy children.
Their school performance suffers, which tends to have a negative impact on
their self-esteem.
But not
all school absences have equal impact on a child’s progress. In a 2011 study
published in the American Journal of Public Health, a team of researchers from
the University of North Carolina found that “school absences caused by dental
pain or infection were significantly related to parents’ reports of poor school
performance, whereas school absences for routine dental care were not. These
findings underscore the likelihood that school absence is not a stand-alone
factor in considerations of school performance, providing further evidence that
children experiencing pain or infection may have a diminished educational
experience because their discomfort may inhibit their ability to perform well
while at school.”
Good
oral hygiene and regular visits to the dentist, even if those visits have to be
scheduled during school hours, help keep your child’s teeth healthy. And
children with good oral health are more likely to have better outcomes at
school.
