[0:00 – 0:56]
Meg Faure (Intro): Is your child mouth-breathing in their sleep? Do they snore, grind their teeth, or resist brushing? You might be surprised to learn that these are not just harmless quirks. They could be red flags affecting your child’s growth, sleep behaviour, and immunity. In this episode, I sit down with the brilliant Dr. Rafif Tayara, a leading paediatric dentist from Dubai, to explore the powerful connection between your child’s mouth and their overall health. From tongue ties to diet, allergies, and bedroom hygiene, this conversation is packed with practical insights that every parent needs to hear. What you’ll learn today, why mouth-breathing matters and how to spot it early, when to start brushing your baby’s teeth and gums, the impact of sugar, juice, and diet on oral and systemic health, how to gently support toddlers through tooth brushing battles, and why a child’s dental care starts before their first tooth. This is a must-listen for any parent who wants to raise a healthy, well-rested child, starting from the inside out. Tune in now and get ready to rethink everything you thought about your little one’s smile.
[0:56 – 1:40]
Announcer: Welcome to Sense by Meg Faure, the podcast that’s brought to you by ParentSense, the app that takes guesswork out of parenting. If you’re a new parent, then you are in good company. Your host, Meg Faure, is a well-known OT, infant specialist, and the author of eight parenting books. Each week, we’re going to spend time with new moms and dads just like you to chat about the week’s wins, the challenges, and the questions of the moment. Subscribe to the podcast, download the ParentSense app, and catch Meg here every week to make the most of that first year of your little one’s life.
[1:41 – 1:52]
Announcer: And now, meet your host.
Meg Faure: Welcome back, moms and dads. Today’s guest is someone who I have been fascinated to speak to.
[1:52 – 2:02]
Meg Faure: She has a passion for children’s health that goes far beyond just teeth, but she is a dentist. So welcome, Dr. Rafif Tayara.
Dr. Rafif Tayara: Thank you. Thank you, Meg, for having me today.
[2:02 – 3:10]
Meg Faure: So, Rafif is a leading paediatric dentist in Dubai, and I was recently in Dubai and ended up on a stage alongside her, and we were talking about the topic of sleep, and I was thinking, “Why would we have a paediatric dentist on a panel talking about sleep?” But I was really quite blown away by her perspectives on infant health as it pertains to teeth and the mouth and so on. And so, because it’s not something that any of us really think about much, actually, I asked her then if she would please join us on this podcast. So I’m really, really grateful that you’re here with us today, Dr. Rafif, it’s lovely to have you. So I’m guessing a lot of people are kind of thinking, “Why on earth a paediatric dentist? How does this differ from a regular dentist?” And kind of, “Why would you even choose the speciality?” So can you give us a little bit of insight into what paediatric dentistry is?
Dr. Rafif Tayara: Yeah, so I started my journey with training to be just a general dentist. And usually, depending on the region, you know, on the map where you are, usually it’s a training from five to seven years where you just graduate, you know, to become what we say a doctor in dental medicine.
[3:10 – 5:34]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: But then after that goes, you know, your direction to different specialities. And, you know, just like in medicine, you have a paediatrician, you know, a podiatrist for the foot, a cardiologist, a haematologist, an endocrinologist, the same thing happens in dental medicine where you can go to a different speciality. And one of the main specialities in dentistry that you can train for after finishing dentistry would be paediatrics or paediatric dentistry. And the training of paediatric dentistry for a lot of you guys who don’t know is actually a three to four years training. Typically mine was done, you know, at a children’s hospital where you see a lot of sick kids, unhealthy kids from different wards in the hospital. So I used to see a lot of special needs kids from the autism floor. I used to see a lot of epileptic kids from the epilepsy floor. I used to see cleft and palate. I used to see mental health, Tourette syndrome, you know, everything basically. So I feel that part of a chunk of my training was done on children who had special needs and a lesser part of my training was done on just completely healthy kids. And that made me, you know, get the whole area of the spectrum, you know, of children. But basically paediatric dentistry is really a speciality where we really not only treat children in terms of their oral health, but also we treat it as a whole in terms of how this mouth is connected to the face and to the overall body and health of a child. But also we are trained to treat special needs kids and we are also trained to prevent. And this is the importance that we’re gonna talk about maybe later about how important is to start early, very, very early and also counselling pregnant women. So even way before you have a child, you know, how can you prevent, you know, oral health diseases? How can you prevent, you know, things through taking care of your mouth?
[5:34 – 6:29]
Meg Faure: Absolutely fascinating. And I think for nine out of 10 of us, first of all, I never took my children to a paediatric dentist. I just took them to the dentist that I went to. And I think that that happens quite typically. But of course, I mean, children are just so different and their teeth development is so different. So it makes sense that you would have a paediatric dentist. So let’s start off with your typically developing child who has just, you know, you’ve had a normal pregnancy, regular pregnancy. Your little one has teethed at the regular age, their teeth have come out. Can you give us a little bit of information what you would be doing from a preventative health perspective for those typically developing children? Like when should parents be brushing their baby’s teeth? Should they be using fluoride? And when do they have to have their first checkups? That type of normal trajectory.
Dr. Rafif Tayara: Yeah, so one of the most important reasons why a parent should seek a paediatric dentist, for example, and not a general dentist, is the whole topic of also phobia.
[6:29 – 7:25]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: You know, we all heard of dental phobia or the fear from the dentist. And we all have friends or relatives or someone in our, you know, environment where they really dread going to the dentist and they really, you know, count until 10, or sometimes they wait until they have a huge toothache before going to the dentist or taking an appointment. And this is one of the, you know, big important reasons why we have to take our child to a paediatric dentist very early because, you know, put aside the counselling that we do or the things we discover or the, you know, the tips we give or the exams we do, is just the matter, just the fact that the child goes to a paediatric dental setup where the environment is really made to accept him as, you know, in terms of mental health and, you know, make this visit and this preparation as smooth and positive as possible.
[7:26 – 8:20]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: But also the whole wandering around the dental room, you know, having a paediatric dentist who is actually trained to smoothen or make the experience as positive as possible for him, that goes a long way. And that actually makes the difference between a child who, you know, comes to the dentist at seven with a huge phobia, you know, you can’t even touch him or ask him to open his mouth before he starts crying or shivering and a child who goes, you know, from year one every six months and he’s so happy. And, you know, my patients now, they even ask their parents like, “Is it time to go to the dentist? Is it time to go to the checkup?” And this goes a long way because what’s more important than a healthy smile, you know, your smile is your passport to life is, you know, the way you speak to people, you interact, you eat, you know, it’s really the gateway for the whole body.
[8:20 – 8:36]
Meg Faure: It’s very interesting. I mean, I am one of those people, by the way. I had too many teeth when I was very little. And so they had to do a whole lot of extractions. And I mean, I think it was all done before, maybe even some of my baby teeth. I don’t actually remember, but all I know is I have the most terrible fears. So for me, first of all, yes, I am 100% on your page from a psychological perspective.
[8:36 – 8:56]
Meg Faure: So lovely to hear that. So for just a couple of the other questions I asked, when should parents start brushing their baby’s teeth? And do you have any advice? Because I have a lot of moms who moan about the fact that their toddler will not let them near their mouth with the toothbrush. So what should they be doing?
[8:56 – 10:15]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: So I always tell parents, just like we start the body hygiene, the physical hygiene of a newborn, when they’re first born, right? We start showering them, we start cleaning them, we start changing their diapers. The cleaning or the hygiene of the oral cavity, as we call it, or the mouth as a whole should start at the same time. So what we advise is typically babies don’t get their first tooth before four to six months. So even before that, there’s something that we call gum brushing. So when you brush or clean the gums of a child, right? Especially when we’re doing breastfeeding, right? Or formula feeding, there’s always residues from the breast milk or the formula that stays in the mouth and then you can grow, it’s like bacteria feeding on those residues. So it’s super important to start doing what we call the gum brushing. And this usually is done with a wet gauze. So any wet gauze that you have at home, you can just wet it with drinking water and then you can pass it on the gums inside your, on the gums, massage the gums of your newborn inside his cheeks, a little bit of his palate. And then this would be the first gesture of cleaning the mouth of your newborn.
[10:15 – 10:53]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: And then so on, once you get to the first tooth coming out in his mouth, usually around four to six months, we start with the actual tooth brushing. So we use a baby toothbrush. Usually on the market, you would find them, it’s written “0 to 2” or “0 to 4”. And then it has like little bristles, a little head. And then you start brushing. Moving on around one year of age, you can start using a little bit of toothpaste. And usually we use like literally what we call a smear layer. A smear layer of a toothpaste. And then there’s the whole controversy between using a fluoride or no fluoride, but then I’ll leave it to another time.
[10:54 – 11:34]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: And then just basically just a smear layer of toothpaste that you can use for your child to enhance him. And then this whole idea of toothbrushing is not only to clean, but to also getting, giving the habit to the child or the newborn or the baby that the habit of putting a toothbrush inside his mouth. And this will make him, you know, tolerant to that idea because I hear a lot of moms sometimes with their children at three or four have never brushed their teeth. And they tell me, “Oh, you know, it’s a battle to brush his teeth.”
Meg Faure: Yeah. I know that moment.
[11:35 – 12:09]
Meg Faure: Yeah, exactly. I mean, that is so common for the parents. One of the things I sometimes recommend for parents if they’re really battling with their little one with toothbrushing is to give them an electric toothbrush because that little bit of vibration can actually be somehow calming for the little one. And if they’re holding it, it can be a little easier. What is your thoughts on electric toothbrush versus a handheld toothbrush? Or is it just whatever they’ll take, use?
Dr. Rafif Tayara: Electrical toothbrushes are excellent. And usually we recommend them starting six years of age, but we’re talking about the electrical toothbrush, not the battery operated, because there’s a difference.
[12:10 – 13:19]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: But it’s super important to have an electrical, like a real electrical toothbrush, the one that you charge. And those electrical toothbrush actually brush teeth much better and with a better performance than a manual toothbrush. But we typically want to use them for a six-year-old child and older because sometimes the strong vibrations, they scare a toddler or a preschool child. But I am having now recently like a trend more with preschool kids loving their electrical toothbrushes and companies who produce electrical toothbrush are making now more like a toddler version or preschool version. So I always say like, when you’re a mom, whatever works for you, you just need to go with it because doctors can preach and they give a lot of information and can orient you and then direct you. But at the end of the day, what feels good in your guts, you just need to implement it at home. What works for one child doesn’t work for another. But in terms of efficiency, electrical toothbrushes are amazing.
Meg Faure: That’s amazing, very interesting.
[13:19 – 14:21]
Meg Faure: And so before we move on to kind of dysfunctional areas, I just want to just talk a little bit more about preventative health. And I want to talk about food and juice and sweets and that type of thing. Are there any, I mean, is it just the normal foodstuffs that you would recommend children not eating like, you know, sugary snacks? Or are there more things that you really, parents should be watching that their children don’t eat? And are there things that their children should be eating?
Announcer: This episode is brought to us by ParentSense, the all-in-one baby and parenting app that help you make the most of your baby’s first year. Don’t you wish someone would just tell you everything you need to know about caring for your baby? When to feed them, how to wean them, and why they won’t sleep? ParentSense app is like having a baby expert on your phone guiding you to parent with confidence. Get a flexible routine, daily tips and advice personalised for you and your little one. Download ParentSense app now from your app store and take the guesswork out of parenting.
[14:22 – 14:59]
Meg Faure: Are there more things that you really, parents should be watching that their children don’t eat? And are there things that their children should be eating?
Dr. Rafif Tayara: Yeah, well, we know today that kids today are consuming five times more sugar than what they’re supposed to have. So we know that the consumption of sugar is becoming really, really high. And when we see kids or new parents at the clinic, we always have, especially during the first visit, some time blocked to do a lot of nutrition counselling.
[14:59 – 16:14]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: And this nutrition counselling goes a long way because we wanna be able to, you know, prevent the oral health diseases from all aspects. So not only from the teeth perspective, but also from the nutrition, from the sleep, from the breathing, because we know today that cavities, for example, are multifactorial. So it’s not just what you eat, it’s also how you sleep, it’s also how you breathe. And when it comes to food and diet and snacking, we wanna always encourage, you know, snacking like fruits, vegetables, fresh cheese, and we wanna discourage crackers, processed carbs, and juices, especially today, juices comes in all shapes and forms in the supermarket. And there’s a lot of misguiding labels like, you know, 100% organic or 100% pure fruit or sugar-free. But when you actually, you know, turn around the box and you actually read the labels, and if you’re a little bit, if you do more your research and you dig more into what the numbers say is, and what the chemical agents actually mean, you will realise that there’s a lot of sugar hidden in those boxes.
[16:14 – 16:26]
Meg Faure: And what I always tell the moms, you know, if it’s written 100% organic on the juice box, it doesn’t mean that it’s sugar-free. Yeah, absolutely. But that’s quite interesting. So, I mean, obviously things like soda pops and kind of fizzy drinks, absolute no, no.
Dr. Rafif Tayara: And those are probably full of fructose and artificial sweeteners and so on.
Meg Faure: And also acid.
[16:37 – 17:01]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: And acid. Yeah, absolutely. So fizzy drinks are like completely, you know, very bad because you have the double trouble. You have the sugar and the acid. And those two things, you have a lower, you know, you have an acid that lowers the pH of the mouth and you have a high sugar. So this is a complete recipe to have, you know, not only cavities, but wearing down the enamel of your teeth.
[17:02 – 17:47]
Meg Faure: That’s so interesting. And what about if you had a really high quality fruit juice? So something, even if you’ve squeezed oranges at home, is that level of sugar in juice also not fabulous?
Dr. Rafif Tayara: I mean, of course, a glass of fresh orange juice has a lot of benefits, but at the same time, if you compare it to eating an orange, like the orange fruit, is much better. Because when you’re eating an orange, you get the fibres, you get, you know, everything. And for you to have a glass of orange juice, you have to squeeze five oranges or four oranges. So we always want to encourage having the actual fruit rather than the juice. And if a child wants to have a juice, it’s always better to have it with a meal and not as a snack.
[17:47 – 18:13]
Meg Faure: Because when you have it with a meal, your saliva level is high in the mouth, then it’s easy to buffer it. It’s easy to flush it down. You know, it’s easy to flush the sugar and the acid. And so that just brings me around to where I was going, which is you are not discouraging fruit per se. In fact, you actually said, I heard you say fruits and vegetables, you do want children eating. So you do want them eating fruit, but not drinking fruit juice, which I’m completely aligned with for so many reasons. So that’s all massively interesting.
[18:14 – 18:40]
Meg Faure: A little around diet. You mentioned something that I don’t know if other people picked up on, but I picked up on it and I heard it on the stage. And that is that mouth breathing can lead to cavities. Now I had never heard of that. And actually mouth breathing per se, wasn’t something that was in my mind as something negative, but I’d love you to really unpack just a little bit about what mouth breathing is, why it’s bad for our teeth and actually why it’s bad for our systems as a whole. Because I thought that was really fascinating when you spoke about that on the stage.
[18:40 – 19:17]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: Yeah. So when I usually like present to moms or have conversations with moms, I always show them a picture of a child sleeping with his mouth open. And often I get a reaction like, “Oh, you know, my child is so cute, he snores or he opens his mouth.” But the reality is that there’s still a lot of awareness to do with parents when it comes to mouth breathing. We really need to raise more awareness that it’s not normal for a child to open his mouth when they sleep.
[19:17 – 20:19]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: It’s not normal for them to snore and it’s not normal for them to grind their teeth. And mouth breathing has been now like a very hot topic in sleep medicine because we are now seeing a lot of studies coming up and we’re understanding now the link between mouth breathing and even behaviours, you know, of children in preschool and school and even going through adulthood. And we’re seeing is that the same child who is mouth breathing, you know, when he’s a baby is the same child who will grind his teeth later, you know, wet his bed later, very hard to, for example, potty train. And then it’s the same child who has, you know, who’s labelled ADD, you know, who has deficit of attention. And also is the same adult that is snoring and, you know, having to wear a machine for him to sleep and the wife sends him to another bedroom to sleep. So it’s really a continuous curve that you grow in it.
[20:19 – 20:50]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: And then we didn’t really, we weren’t aware of that because now I see children every day and I see those kinds of problems. And then suddenly the mom tells me, “Oh, that’s my husband. You know, my husband now snores and I have to send him to another room. And then we’ve done the surgeries, we removed the adenoids, we removed the tonsils. And then, you know, we never were able to solve that problem.” So we need to know today that mouth breathing in children is really related to a lot of issues.
[20:51 – 22:21]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: And when we see those symptoms in a child on our dental chair, we always go and investigate. So we check the airway, you know, what’s happening in the airway. Is his nose blocked? Why is it blocked? Is the tonsils enlarged? Do we have big adenoids? Do we have allergies? And a lot of those kids, 80% of those kids have allergies. And there’s those allergies, if they’re not well controlled, you know, you end up having a child who was a chronic mouth breather. So it was always, you know, mouth breathing. And you can see there are signs that parents can tell even if they’re not, you know, dental experts. Like for example, you see kids, you know, having under eye dark circles, right? So under eye dark circles in kids is a big sign that they’re opening their mouth. You see kids, for example, who sleep talk or bed wet a lot. They wake up a lot during the night. They move a lot in their bed. They have a position where they’re sleeping in bed. If you see newborns or babies specifically, they sleep in their bed and their head, you know, flex to the back, right? They’re sleeping like this on the side and like this. And this is a big sign that they’re mouth breathing because they’re trying to do almost a self, you know, CPR. They’re trying to do the tilt chin lift that we actually do when we want to rescue someone, you know, because they’re trying to get more air, you know, into their system. So it’s, I mean, it’s fascinating.
[22:21 – 22:44]
Meg Faure: And when you talked about that, I had heard that much before that you’ve spoken about all the way through from mouth breathing, that trajectory through bed wetting, ADD, and then onto snoring. And it was fascinating to me. If I’m a mom of a three-week-old or six-month-old, let’s say, who’s mouth breathing, you know, and obviously I’m listening to this and going, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got this whole trajectory of like disastrous, you know, disaster ahead of me.”
[22:44 – 23:57]
Meg Faure: How do we start to deal with that six-month-old to prevent that much from happening? And how do we stop that mouth breathing?
Dr. Rafif Tayara: Yeah, so it’s really by doing a simple exam, you know, with a simple exam into his overall health and his oral cavity or his mouth, we can check for tongue ties, for example, a tongue tie can be present there. So the tongue cannot move, you know, well up into the palate. So a simple procedure of releasing the tongue and having it move freely, a lot of things can pop up, you know, for example, problems in latching during breastfeeding. If a baby has problems latching during breastfeeding, one of the things that can pop up is having a tongue tie or having a low posture of the tongue. You know, the tongue is lazy. And those things are really simple to treat when they’re very, very, very early and they’re harder to treat going onwards. Also jaws, sometimes we have, you know, kids genetically born with super small jaws. And sometimes what we do, for example, at the clinic is expansion. So basically we widen the jaws for them to breathe better and have the tongue go up.
[23:58 – 24:25]
Meg Faure: Okay, so, I mean, it’s interesting that you talk about the tongue tie. I actually did an episode on the tongue tie because it was a lactation consultant in America called Jacqueline I-can’t-remember, who actually specialises in tongue ties. It was a fascinating episode. Also talking about little ones not being able to latch. So moms, if your little one hasn’t latched easily, is not breastfeeding. If your breasts and nipples were absolutely trashed when they were feeding on you and they are now mouth breathers, there could be a tongue tie there.
[24:26 – 25:33]
Meg Faure: So definitely something worth looking into. The other thing that moms can do, it sounds like without coming to see a paediatric dentist is look at allergies because that’ll be another reason why. And so, you know, just making sure the babies can breathe through their nose. Is there anything else that a mom could do other than those two things without seeing a paediatric dentist or is for everything else, they would need to see somebody?
Dr. Rafif Tayara: There’s also what we call the bedroom hygiene, you know, removing. We have a lot of trends now, like the baby brands really push you into furnishing massively the bedroom of your baby and I always feel and advise that, you know, the simpler, the cleaner it is, the better, you know, getting rid of all those puffy carpets in the bedroom of your child, the teddy bears, you know, the soft toys because this is really a magnet for dust and dust mites and a lot of allergens, agents that, you know, you wanna really avoid them early to your newborn. And then this will, you know, they have a very, they have very small lungs, very small nose, very small air pipe. So the more you charge it with all those dust agents, the more you’re gonna not help him breathe and sleep better.
[25:33 – 26:18]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: So this is a good tip. And another thing also, the simple nasal, you know, what we call the “nose toilet,” right? Which, you know, the saline, like the normal saline or, you know, water, that salted water that you clean the nose of your child with, especially in areas like the UAE, for example, where it’s humid, a lot of moisture and a lot of dust, especially when, if your child is living in a polluted city, for example, like London or Paris or Dubai, it’s very important to perform this nasal hygiene on a daily basis to clear his nose and for him to be able to breathe better.
[26:19 – 26:30]
Meg Faure: That’s very interesting. So that’s just using a simple little saline spray that you spray up the nose a little bit. So, Rafif, this has been absolutely fascinating.
[26:30 – 26:49]
Meg Faure: There are so many things we have not got to. We haven’t spoken about snoring. We haven’t spoken about dummy use and how to get rid of them. There were just so many things. So I do think we’re going to have to pick this up again. But you’ve really given us a fabulous base to look at early infant and child dentistry health or mouth health.
[26:50 – 27:13]
Meg Faure: If a mom wanted to get hold of you, do you have a social media channel? Are they able to get hold of you? Do you do Zoom consultations? I’m sure that it’s difficult with the mouth, but we have got an international audience. How can people get hold of you?
Dr. Rafif Tayara: Yeah, so we just opened this year our new children dental centre. It’s called Junior Dental and it’s in Dubai on Jumeirah Beach Road.
[27:14 – 27:32]
Dr. Rafif Tayara: And parents can reach out to me at my own social media channel, which is @drtayara or at @juniordental.ae.
Meg Faure: That’s wonderful. Well, we definitely will make sure that people do get hold of you. And we are going to have you back because I feel like we’ve only just scratched the surface.
[27:32 – 27:47]
Meg Faure: I know last time when you and I chatted, we also talked about how the mouth affects the gut microbiome. So my head is whirring. I think there’s a lot for us to talk about and we will definitely take this up. But thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Rafif Tayara: Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
Announcer: Thanks to everyone who joined us.
[27:48 – 27:58]
Announcer: We will see you the same time next week. Until then, download ParentSense app and take the guesswork out of parenting.
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