Background and Objective: Dental caries is still a major health problem in pre-school children, especially in rural areas of Thailand. In early childhood caries [ECC], parents provide the total care for a child’s oral hygiene. Thus, the parents’ role is essential for preventing tooth decay in pre-school children both with and without cleft lip and palate. The purpose of this
study was to develop the factors that characterize parental behaviors in oral hygiene for the pre-school children.
Materials and Methods: Exploratory factor analysis was used to test the relationships between the parental behaviors in oral hygiene for the pre-school children and factors from health belief model and from social learning cognitive theory.
Results: The 5 factors found to be related with one another in the analysis, including the child’s oral hygiene, the parental
behaviors modification in oral hygiene for the pre-school children, parental belief in oral care, parental perception of personal ability, and parental oral hygiene knowledge. These 5 factors were measured by the 14 observation variables, which can be explained with the variance at 68.98%. In addition, food choices and social support were not indicative of oral care practice.
Conclusion: The factor loading can be used to analyze the causal relationships between parental oral hygiene practices and pre-school children oral hygiene. These factors will help to determine the patterns of oral care for all preschool children both with and without the cleft palate at an early age.

Keywords: Early childhood caries, Parental behavior, Causal relationship