Early Childhood Oral Health Promotion

Inclusion criteria: parents with healthy new-born child attending their local child health/community health clinic for routine health check. Exclusion criteria: Children with developmental disabilities. early childhood dental caries;childhood obesity; early childhood dental caries childhood obesity;Oral and Gastrointestinal - Other diseases of the mouth, teeth, oesophagus, digestive system including liver and colon;Public Health - Health promotion/education;Public Health - Epidemiology Brief motivational interviewing counseling session provided by a trained oral health counselor with parent/carer of child at approximately 8 weeks age and then at 3-4 months of age and at 6 months of age. Brief motivational interviewing approach, which has been used in many different settings, relies on a brief empathic counselling session where the client is helped to explore and verbalize the reasons for changing the health behaviour, and find the reasons for the change themselves. The impetus for change stems from the person and is not imposed by the counselor; the client is the initiator and an active participant in the change process and not merely a recipient of information being delivered by an expert. The counseling sessions will take approximately 45 minutes. caries incidence and increment. Children will be examined for incidence of dental caries and the presence of enamel defects by blinded, calibrated examiners at 12, 24, 36 months of age, using the criteria specified by Workshop on Reporting Early Childhood Caries and modified Development Defects of Enamel Index.[At 12, 24, and 36 months of age];early childhood obesity[BMI at 12, 24, and 36 months of age] change in attitudes, self-efficacy and knowledge of parent/caregivers. A questionnaire at baseline, 12 and 36 months will collect socio-demographic information as well as information on psychosocial measures comprising oral health-related self-efficacy, knowledge about appropriate baby bottle use and children's oral hygiene and belief in oral fatalism based on that operationalised by Finlayson et.al; parental stress and social support.[At 12 and 36 months of age]