Association between children's resilience and practising oral habits: a cross-sectional study

Introduction While resilience is the quality of being buffered against stressors, practising oral habits is suggested to be a maladaptive behaviour towards stressors. The relation between resilience and practising oral habits in children remains vague.Aims This study aims to investigate the association between practising oral habits and resilience in children aged 5-7 years.Materials and methods An electronic Google form questionnaire was distributed through social media among five schools' children's parents, utilising the Child and Youth Resilience Measure-Revised Person Most Knowledgeable version (PMK-CYRM-R) scale as a resilience assessment tool, and the third domain of interview part of the Nordic Orofacial Test-Screen (NOT-S) as a habit assessment tool. The questionnaire received 227 eligible responses which were divided into habit-free group (123; 54.19%) and habit-practising group (104; 45.81%). The third domain of the interview part of the NOT-S included sucking habit, bruxism and nail-biting habits. The mean PMK-CYRM-R scores were calculated for each group and statistical analysis was done using SPSS Statistics package.Results Total PMK-CYRM-R score was 46.05 ± 3.63 in the habit-free group and 44.10 ± 3.59 in the habit-practising group (p = 0.0001). Bruxism, nail-biting and sucking habit subgroups showed statistically significant lower personal resilience levels than the habit-free group.Conclusion The results of the current study suggest that children with low resilience levels may be more likely to practise oral habits.