Oral hygiene in kindergarten age in the light of a micro research

Abstract

Nowadays, proper oral hygiene is a frequently debated topic in educational institutions and in kindergartens too. In our research we focused on the oral hygiene of children at kindergarten age. It was considered necessary to make researches on this topic and to draw an objective picture of the situation, as according to our experience this form of personal hygiene plays a minor role in Hungarian kindergartens. According to the study of the ’United States Surgeon General’ (2009), dental caries is the most common chronic disease of children aged 5-17 years meaning that it is five times more common than asthma and seven times more common than hay fever. In our research we briefly mention the devastating conditions of small children’s teeth and their frequent diseases. We present our survey that was made with kindergarten teachers (N78) working in randomly chosen kindergartens of our two counties (Gyor-Moson-Sopron county and Vas county). We concluded that although there is tooth brushing in most of the researched Hungarian kindergartens, the institutions cannot provide appropriate conditions to that. Quality and theoretical activities of tooth brushing are neglected and in educational programmes kindergarten teachers deal very little with the topic of oral hygiene. However, it was also found that the government does not pay enough attention to preventive dental care among Hungarian children of kindergarten age.