At some point during an orthodontic treatment, your child will need to wear a retainer. Retainers are a thin, pink plastic appliance that fits against the roof of the mouth and hold the teeth in their proper position.
It isn’t too long until kids discover that a retainer can smell pretty nasty. That nasty smell comes from rotting particles of food trapped inside the gums, around the teeth, and even on the appliance itself. To prevent a retainer from smelling, it takes a little more care than just a casual cleaning with warm water.
Clean the retainer after meals
Even though your child is wearing a retainer, she still should brush and floss at least twice a day. Immediately following the teeth brushing is a logical time to clean the retainer as well. Your child can use her regular toothbrush and toothpaste and brush the appliance thoroughly on both sides and around the wires. To prevent damage, a retainer should only be washed and rinsed in lukewarm water.
To freshen the retainer from time to time, it’s fine to rinse it occasionally with a bit of mouthwash.
For those times that your child can’t brush her teeth following a snack, it’s perfectly OK to give the retainers a quick rinse with water. The easiest way to do this at school is to take a drink of water from the fountain and then swish the water around the mouth before swallowing.
Using a denture cleaning tablet
For kids who aren’t too keen on brushing their retainers, there is an easier way to keep them clean. This easier method uses denture cleaning tablets which can be found in the oral care section at the grocery store. To clean a retainer using denture tablets, simply cut a tablet in half and drop half a tablet in a small cup filled with tepid water. Add the retainer, and let soak for about 20 minutes. If your child does this at dinnertime, by the time the meal is over the retainer will be clean and fresh smelling.
From time to time she may still need to brush particles of trapped food away from the appliance.
Removing calcium build ups
Using denture tablets is also a terrific way to remove the calcium deposits that can form on the retainer. Don’t have denture tablets in the house? Soaking the appliance in one cup of white vinegar will also help. Depending on the amount of buildup, the retainer may have to be soaked for 4 – 8 hours before the calcium softens enough to be brushed away.
Sonic cleaning
There are a couple of new products on the market that our family hasn’t tried yet, but are supposedly an easy way to clean and disinfect those retainers. These products use sonic vibrations to remove plaque, tartar, and bacteria from retainers, mouth guards, and dentures in 15 minutes. To use these sonic cleaners, the retainers are dropped into a small machine along with a bit of water and a cleanser, and then the machine takes care of the rest. Sonic baths start at around $40. If I still had a houseful of kids with retainers and mouth guards, this is definitely a product that I’d buy in a hurry.
Keeping a retainer clean really isn’t that difficult, but takes a little more care than a child may be used to. If regular brushing with toothpaste seems to be beyond your child’s ability, denture tablets or a sonic cleaning systems are both terrific options for keeping those retainers from smelling nasty.
