Monitor Data

get your child’s dental health off to an early start, and both of you will have lots to smile about later-great checkups.

Although you may think of candy as the main culprit in harming teeth, even “good” foods-milk, fruit juices, and formulas-have sugars that break down and cause decay producing acid. Here are tips to prevent damages.

* Take action before your infant has teeth. Wipe off the gums with gauze or a washcloth moistened with water after each feeding.

* Use a soft-bristled, child-sized toothbrush with water when your child’s first tooth appears.

* Consider weaning your child from the bottle by his or her first birthday.

* Take your child to dentist by his or her first birthday, advises by experts.

* Help with brushing and flossing until your child is old enough to do it alone.

* Ask your dentist about flouride and sealants for prevention, and when to start using toothpaste.

Attitudes and habits established at an early age are critical in maintaining good oral health throughout life, says health experts. Set a good example. To motivate small children, use your toothbrush at the same time. Encourage your little ones to brush thoroughly-by “catching all the sugar bugs” hiding in their teeth. For older kids, try incentives. For instance, put stars or colorful stickers on a chart for every they brush.

Wall street seems to be on the mend because we have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the figures we are given. But there is a hollow to this economic rebound at the seat of capitalism. More Americans, we are informed, continue to lose their homes to mortgage foreclosures, and doors to employment remain slummed shut against the growing cue of the unemployed. This, after millions, billions even taxpayer’s money has gone into the rescue of corporate giants. So, is it back to the executive jets, to sprawling displays of shameless opulence in the posh neighborhoods of the filthy rich while the aged watch their life-savings vanish and their homes put up for sale? It seems so unfair! So, I take up once more the whole idea of “social justice”.

In the first place, why should society be fair? Has it not been the creed of societies that swear by capitalism that in the contest for prosperity, some will flourish, while some will be left bleeding by the wayside, there to waste away and perish? Every argument for fairness will be question-begging. That we must be fair cannot be proven, not because it is some gratuitous assumption that can be as gratuitously denied, but because it is self-evident. Fairness is a demand of reasonableness, and we are supposed to be reasonable! Attempting to establish ethics on a cognitivist base-and so avoid the pitfalls of making “right” depend on “what feels right”-Thomas Aquinas taught that the so-called “first principles” of practical reason from which we infer what should be avoided are as self-evident as are the principles of non-contradiction and identity-the first principles of “speculative reason”.