Abstract
It is essential for guardians to help children with tooth brushing at home for prevention of dental caries, while assisting autistic children with tooth brushing presents various challenges. We conducted a questionnaire survey of guardians of preschool children aged 4 to 5 years and compared 40 autistic children with 56 normally developing children in regard to tooth brushing habits and uncooperative behavior during help with brushing. The following results were obtained All autistic children surveyed received help with tooth brushing from their guardians. For analysis, 45% of those with autism were categorized into the behaviorally difficult group, which was a significantly greater percentage as compared to those among normally developing children (p＜0.01). During help with tooth brushing,95% of autistic children exhibited more than 1 type of uncooperative behavior as compared with44.7% of normally developing children, which was a significant difference (p＜0.01). As compared with normally developing children, autistic children exhibited a significantly higher proportion of uncooperative behaviors such as “biting the toothbrush,” “refusing to put the toothbrush into the mouth,” and “resisting the toothbrush with crying and struggling” (p＜0.01). As compared with autistic children in the behaviorally easy-to-handle group, those in the behaviorally difficult group exhibited a significantly higher proportion of “resisting the toothbrush with crying and struggling” during help with tooth brushing (p＜0.01).
