PARENTAL KNOWLEDGE TOWARDS CHILDREN’S DENTAL AND ORAL HYGIENE

Dental and oral hygiene problem is the leading cause of daily activities disruption in children such as missing school, bad learning concentration, appetite and nutritional intake. Knowledge of dental and oral hygiene should be given at early age in family by the parents. The aim of our work was to determine relationship between parents’ knowledge and dental hygiene of the SDLB children (children with special needs). We undertook this research with analytical survey. A cross-sectional design was carried out. The sampling method was total sampling namely parents of children with special needs and the children as many as 80 people. Chi-Square test was performed to analyze the data. The results show that the knowledge of parents about dental and oral hygiene is not good (85%), while the dental and oral hygiene in children with special needs is poor (85%). Based on the Chi-Square Test, it produces a p-value of sig (2-sided) = 0.002 in the test, so it can obtain a p-value (probability value) from the test (p = 0.002 = 0.05) so that Ho is rejected. In conclusion, a relationship between parental knowledge and oral hygiene in children with special needs does exist.