Optimizing Parent Training to Improve Oral Health Behavior and Outcomes in Underserved Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
A bedtime social story told by parents cut plaque and improved gums in preschoolers with autism.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers asked parents to read a short social story about toothbrushing every night for six months. The kids were preschoolers with and without autism from low-income families.
Parents got a 10-minute demo and a printed story. No extra clinic visits. The team checked teeth and gums before and after.
What they found
Kids with autism gained more than the typical kids. Their toothbrushing got better and their gums looked healthier.
All families kept using the story. No one dropped out.
How this fits with other research
Moorthy et al. (2022) saw the opposite: autistic children had worse hygiene even when parents said they brushed. The gap is age. Lakshmi studied older kids (5-11) with no set plan. Our preschoolers had a clear story and daily steps.
Smith et al. (2014) showed a short video plus star rewards also improved hand-washing in kids with mild ID. Same idea: show, reward, repeat. It works across self-care jobs.
Carr et al. (2016) proved low-income families stay in parent training if you cut travel and give flex times. Our study used that recipe and kept every family for six months.
Why it matters
You can mail a one-page story and change mouth health. No chair, no app, no cost. Try it Monday: pick a self-care task, write a three-line story, have parents read it at bedtime. Track one simple measure like gum color or plaque swipe. If it works for teeth, it may work for hair, face, or hand washing too.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Toothbrushing is a routine practice for oral hygiene maintenance. It is also a challenging task for young children with special care needs. In this study, social stories were employed to teach toothbrushing skills for preschool children with special needs. Those children were recruited from the Special Child Care Centers, including 87 children with autism and 94 children without autism. A validated toothbrushing social story was used to demonstrate the toothbrushing procedure for all the recruited children. Parents were encouraged to show the stories to their children before or during their daily toothbrushing. Children's toothbrushing performance, oral hygiene status, and gingival health status were assessed at baseline and 6 months. Toothbrushing performance, oral hygiene, and gingival status of the recruited children were significantly improved after using social stories. Moreover, children with autism showed better oral hygiene status (P = 0.01) and better gingival status (P < 0.001) than their peers without autism. However, there were no significant differences in the toothbrushing performance among children with and without autism. The regression models indicated that the improvement of children's toothbrushing performance and oral health status were associated with children's intellectual functioning and parents' attitudes toward the usefulness of social story intervention. The principal findings suggested that social story intervention could be used to improve toothbrushing skills among children with or without autism, while it was more efficient in improving the oral hygiene status among children with autism. Autism Res 2020, 13: 666-674. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: Toothbrushing is considered as a basic self-care practice that should be advocated in early childhood. We used social stories to train toothbrushing skills among preschoolers with special care needs. The toothbrushing skills of the recruited children were significantly improved after 6-months intervention, and children with autism showed better oral hygiene status than their peers without autism. These findings suggested that social story-based health promotion could be implemented among children with special needs.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2023 · doi:10.1002/aur.2256