Colgate Building Smiles Tour

I joined Collective Bias several months ago, but this is the first opportunity I was given to do something for them.  I volunteered and happily participated in the Colgate Building Smiles Tour today.  The Colgate Van pulled up to my local Wal-Mart today and was there from 10-1pm.

 

I got there just a few minutes after 10 and was greeted inside by 2 other local bloggers covering the tour and another friend from church. 

The Colgate Van was a nice big RV with 2 dentist chairs inside. 

The driver of the van was distributing balloons and “goodie bags” to the kids there.  I didn’t bring my kids, so I didn’t get one, but it looked like there were fun things for the kids and some coupons for Colgate products.  They also had a cartoon DVD on for the kids about fighting the plaque monsters and good oral care. 

Those of us in the RV sat there and waited...and waited…and waited for the dentist to arrive. 

Evidently there is a dedicated dentist for this RV, but she had another obligation and had made arrangements for a different dentist to volunteer his time.  Unfortunately, after waiting in the RV for 45 minutes then doing my grocery shopping for 30 minutes, the dentist still hadn’t shown.  It was pretty disappointing. 

The normal dentist is scheduled to be at the next Wal-Mart down the road from 3-6pm and I hope that the experience is better for those who attend that one.  There were signs in the windows of Wal-Mart, but in general I don’t think it was very well advertised.  I think the Colgate Building Smiles Tour is a great program and probably helps lots of people with free dental screenings for those age 1-12, but it didn’t help a lot of people at my Wal-Mart from 10-11:15am. 

I spent some time before, during and after, thinking about my family’s oral care habits.   About 6 months ago or so I really buckled down and made my kids have a better routine for oral care.  We started using www.myjobchart.com around then and they became very motivated to get their points so I listed brushing their teeth as one of their morning and nightly chores.  While we still don’t floss as often as we should I’m proud to say my 7yo and 4yo have a pretty good brushing habit.

Unfortunately, I don’t do a great job with the 1yo.  He got teeth really early (and surprisingly I still nursed him over a year!) and although he enjoys chewing on a tooth brush from time to time, I can’t get him to let me brush his teeth.  Not that I try very hard, but he is not a very cooperative 1yo!

We do go to the dentist often (3 times a year, not just 2!) and my kids never put up a fuss, they are happy to go!  I hear of way too many adults who hate going to the dentist because they have had many bad experiences.  I hope I can teach my kids the importance of regular check-ups and that they never have a fear of the dentist or bad experiences. 

I think the thing I learned the most from this experience was that although there are great programs out there to help those that need help, sometimes these things work better than others.  It’s still a good idea to evaluate your current oral care routine and try to make improvements.

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Disclosure:  This post has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for #CollectiveBias.  I was grateful to have the opportunity to work on something as important as oral care and hope other people who attended the tour learned a lot.