dr. robert delarosa is the president of the american academy of pediatric dentistry. for this week's early years, we asked him how big a problem tooth decay for children in our area. dr. robert delarosa:acco rding to the virginia oral health coalition, tooth decay is the number one chronic disease among your children, school- age children, and it causes over a million missed school hours a year. now compute that nationally, that's 51 million school hours missed a year. so it is a really signficant disease. dr. robert delarosa:our message is two minutes twice a day with the brushing, and also with our mouth monsters campaign, you can really get some other helpful tips on how to make it fun. we want to make tooth brushing less of a chore, and more of an activity. i'm the was a game. we had both the kids in the bathroom at the same. we'd brush my daughter's teeth and we'd brush my son's teeth. you really want to make it an engaged amount of fun. there are a lot of products out there that have timers and play music, so, you want to make it less of a chore and more of an ac