MY SON WAS LEFT IN AGONY AGED 4 — BECAUSE HE ATE TOO MUCH FRUIT

CLARE AXWORTHY, 38, from Plymouth, had to take her son Sammy to have three of his teeth removed at the age of four. She says: WHEN sammy was two, the dentist told me his teeth were in a bad state, and asked what I was feeding sammy. When I mentioned dried fruit, he said I may as well be feeding him sugar cubes.

I thought about the meals I’d given sammy as a baby — homemade sweet potato and apricot, or stewed apple and spinach — believing he was getting the most nutritious food I could offer.

In fact, a lot of those foods were high in teeth-damaging natural sugars.

Over the next two years, I took sammy low- sugar snacks to eat on the way home from school, such as baked crisps, toasted bagels with butter and breadsticks. But with 30 kids in his class, he often came out of the nursery with a packet of Haribos or a lollipop.

It didn’t help that he didn’t like drinking milk, and my mum bought him Fruit shoot juices. They sounded healthy, but had plenty of natural sugars in them.

at four, sammy complained of severe toothache. at the dentist’s, we learned he had an abscess beneath a decaying lower molar.

The scene that ensued was medieval; lots of tears and blood as I held down a screaming, writhing child while they yanked out the tooth. X-rays showed similar problems were developing under two more of his lower back teeth. For those, he was booked into hospital to have them both extracted under general anaesthetic.

after the operation, I became even more vigilant. Now sammy is eight and has a full set of healthy adult teeth. The holes from those three horrible extractions are filled nicely.

and, crucially, both of us are now aware of just how important it is to look after his teeth.