Bad Breath in Toddler

Whenever mine has bad breath it usually means some sort of throat problem.

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Just something to think about....I can ALWAYS tell when my kids are getting sick by smelling it on their breath first! It just smells different and bad...

Is he feeling OK?

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I second Inmy30s. The only time my children have bad breath is when they're ill. Check for any other symptoms such as drinking excessively, losing weight etc. Sometimes you can smell keytones for various illnesses and conditions.

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My son had some bad breath issues an year ago when tooth brushing was a real struggle! I made sure brushing his teeth was the last thing he did before he slept and the first thing to do in the morning. I also had to try especially hard to reach out to the innermost teeth (and still have trouble with them even at age 3). The bad breath went away after some time.
Don't give milk after brushing the teeth at night.. it's the number 1 cause of bad breath in my experience. If you have to, make sure he rinses off his mouth really hard at the very least. HTH.

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Could be something like tonsil stones. Tonsils are huge in children, and can really make their breath smell awful.
Also, brushing should be the absolute last thing you do with him before bedtime. If you let him have milk after brushing, then you are just undoing what you just did. Milk has a lot of sugars in it naturally.

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my son's bad breath always meant he had refulx issues that night! It was kinda metallic-like, otherwise it's caused by the milk after brushing.

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Dissolve a little bit of baking soda in water and have him rinse and spit. That's what I've been doing with my stinky breath 2 yo and it seems to be helping. Except of course when he decides he'd rather just dump all the water out of the cup into the sink as a game. :) LOL

I had a friend who's son was having bad breath problems. She came to find out he had stuck some masking tape up his nose and left it there. It was beginning to cause an infection and was the cause of the bad breath too. Once they removed it everything got better. Of course she didn't know he had stuck anything up there, and he was actually a bit older and didn't tell her either. But that was the culprit of the bad breath. I would guess though that the milk after brushing could be your problem, and tooth decay from the milk sitting in his mouth all night is a real threat too.
Good luck.

We had this same issue when my daughter was around two and I asked the pediatric dentist about it. She said to have my daughter eat more apple slices because the enzymes would help with her breath. It did seem to help. That and making sure she was drinking enough water throughout each day.

This exact topic came up on Mamapedia within about the past three or four weeks, so do a search on bad breath and you should find it.

If he's having milk after tooth-brushing at night that could be part of the cause (and is something to end anyway as it will eventually lead to tooth decay). But there can be lots of other reasons -- digestive issues can cause bad breath too. So go over this with the doctor and be sure to ask if there might be reasons to investigate. Most likely this is "morning breath" made worse by the nighttime milk, but ask the doctor for your peace of mind.

My son is 4 and has terrible morning breath and he is in the fighting to brush his teeth stage, so that makes it horrible. But even when his teeth are brushed at night and he drinks nothing after brushing his teeth - he wakes up with horrible breath - but it's nothing that brushing in the mornings doesn't clear up. The dentist wasn't concerned, but i wonder if it's hereditary - my husband has horrible morning breathe (i'm not sure how i overlooked that when we were dating). Good Luck at the dentist and let us know what they tell you.

Almost certainly it will go away by itself and is caused by normal teething issues. Mine had this when teething. Don't worry about it.