Parent beliefs about infant teething: A survey of Australian parents

Objective: Parents ascribe many infant symptoms to teething, despite little evidence to support such an attribution. We report current parental belief s about teething and its management in a suburban Australian setting. Methodology: A written questionnaire was given to all English-speaking pare nts consecutively attending infant hearing testing sessions in one Melbourn e municipality between August and October 1997. Approximately 90% of Victor ian infants attend these sessions. Results: Parents of 92 infants (mean age 9.9 months) completed questionnair es (97% response rate). Only one believed that teething causes no problems. Most (70-85%) believed that teething causes fever, pain, irritability, sle ep disturbance, mouthing/biting, drooling and red cheeks; 35-55% reported n appy rash, 'sooking', ear pulling, feeding problems, runny nose, loose stoo ls, and infections; and a few (< 15%) reported smelly urine, constipation, colic or convulsions. Symptoms reported for a parent's own infant correlate d almost perfectly with symptoms believed to be experienced by infants gene rally (r = 0.97, P < 0.001). Amount of infant distress when teething correl ated with more 'difficult' infant temperament (r = 0.25, P < 0.05), and lon ger duration of symptoms per tooth correlated with parent distress (r = 0.2 6, P < 0.05). Paracetamol (60%) and topical analgesia (55%) were commonly u sed remedies. Parents diagnose teething more by the presence of 'teething s ymptoms' (65%) than by palpable (43%) or visible (36%) tooth eruption. Conclusions: Teething is a distressing but ill-defined phenomenon reported by almost all parents of young children, and most use some form of medicati on to manage it. Most symptoms are minor and relate to discomfort rather th an physical illness, but a substantial minority stilt ascribes potentially serious symptoms to teething.