Perpetual Teething

As a rule of thumb, your child will get four new teeth every six months, and by the time your child turns two or three, he or she will have a complete set of milk teeth. This implies that you will have to deal with teething issues in your toddler’s life for at least the next year. Teething during the first year can be very painful for your toddler. He or she may develop fussiness, although by this time your toddler shall have developed better communication skills to identify the painful areas. Toddlers may also get irritable, refusing to do the usual activities and reverting to clinginess to express their discomfort. Here are other teething symptoms among toddlers and how you can soothe them:

• Chaffed cheeks and chin due to drooling – apply a soothing oil-based ointment for sensitive skin to protect your toddler’s skin from the constant exposure to moisture.
• Constant gnawing on appropriate and inappropriate things – although a toddler’s appetite may be lower, he or she might want to stimulate those gums with constant gnawing. Hand your toddler chilled teething toys or a clean, wet cloth to gnaw on.
• Pulling and rubbing their ears – the teeth, jaw and ears are situated closely together and share some nerve connections. It may initially look like toddlers have ear infection, but they may in fact be interpreting the pain at the back of their mouth as coming from their ears. Monitor their actions and if they don’t stop pulling and rubbing their ears in a couple of days, you need to take them to your physician to check for ear infection, particularly if they’re suffering from fever or colds.
• Waking up at night – sometimes teething pain can be so severe that it wakes a child up at night. Comfort your child in the way he or she likes to be comforted. If he or she doesn’t settle down, however, consider giving your child some pain medication suitable for toddlers.                                                                                                                                                  

Toddler teething time can be hard on parents like you too. But once you begin seeing things from your child’s perspective—that he or she doesn’t even understand the purpose of this perpetual pain on the mouth, and until when it’s going to last—you’ll realize that this too is just any other period that eventually just passes.