Objective: This study aimed to investigate possible early child-hood caries (ECC) risk indicators in preschoolers who appliedfor examination/treatment at the Government University Pedi-atric Dentistry Clinic, İstanbul, Turkey.Material and Methods: Children aged 36-71 months and theirmothers who applied for examination/treatment and consentedwere enrolled in this cross-sectional survey during a 3-month pe-riod. Mother-child pairs were examined intraorally, and cariesexperience was recorded using (dmft/DMFT) an index. A struc-tured questionnaire inquiring oral hygiene habits and diet his-tory of the children was employed to interview the mothers. Cat-egorical data from children with no clinical caries (NC), ECC,Severe ECC (S-ECC) were compared using Chi-square test andcorrelation of caries experience in mother-child pairs and weretested with Spearman rho. Statistical significance was set p<0.05.Results: Two hundred sixty-six children (4.41±0.87 years old)were enrolled in the study. Forty (15.04%) children were diag-nosed with ECC, 209 with S-ECC and 17 had NC. Breastfeed-ing was practiced by 255 (96.2%) mothers, but the duration wasnot different among groups. There was no significant associa-tion with breastfeeding beyond 24 months and caries (p=0.743).Children with S-ECC were snacking more frequently with sweetsthan ECC (p=0.012). The number of mothers with a visible den-tal plaque was higher in S-ECC than ECC (p<0.01). MaternalDMF-T scores significantly correlated with their children’s dmf-tin the whole sample (r=0.547, p<0.01).Conclusion: Preventive measures should begin from pregnancyand focus on oral health/hygiene education to mothers to avoidthe devastating effects of ECC.