Pro-Tips for Parents Struggling with Brush Time

While you may do your best to teach your children the importance of good dental hygiene, oftentimes, they appear reluctant brush time. You may ask yourself whether or not your child cares about their health or whether or not they get cavities. In a way, they really just can’t care yet, however this is perfectly normal behavior.

Most young children fail to understand the concept of actions and consequences quite yet. It doesn’t matter how many times your try to educate or even scare your child with oral hygiene, children are just not cognitively capable of that kind of thinking yet. For a majority of individuals, this awareness and individual motivation to keep up healthy brushing habits will come as they enter their pre-teen and teenage years. Unfortunately, it is crucial for your child’s health that they develop healthy habits long before then. While there is no sure fire to get your child to fully understand the reasoning behind why they brush their teeth and want to avoid cavities, there are a few things to keep in mind in order to make brush time less of a hassle.

Be Consistent: Especially with the reluctant brusher, it may be easier for a parent to let their child skip a brushing, just this once. Once your child thinks that giving you a hard time will get them out of brushing their teeth, they will only be encouraged to misbehave even more. Let your child know that this is, and will continue to be, a core part of their routine that they will be expected to do.

Be Encouraging: There is no doubt that brushing can be monotonous, even for adults. Brushing is just something that has to be done. This may be true, but it is also not the attitude you want to take up when you are trying to get your toddler to brush. Get excited about brushing your teeth and your children may just get enthusiastic on by watching you.

Give Options: Everyone loves options. It makes you feel like you have a bigger sense of control and fun to any situation. While you don’t want to give you child the choice of brushing their teeth or not, an easy way to give your child more options is to let them pick out which toothbrush or toothpaste they use.

Make it fun: One easy way to try to get your kids to enjoy brushing is to turn it into a fun game. While this option may be the most challenging to come up with, it is often the most successful method. Making brushing into a game can change it from something your kids resist into something that they look forward to. There are many approaches you can take to this. You can try having them dance to a 2-minute song or even offer them prizes if they brush without a fuss. The popularity of smart devices has also offered an additional platform for engaging brush games. For example, the recent app, Brushies, uses a Bluetooth attachment and phone game in order to track and encourage proper brushing. There are many different things to choose from that it just breaks down to your child’s preference.

While you shouldn’t be concerned if your young child resists brushing, you still must try to do everything you can in order to make sure they have good dental hygiene. There are many steps you can take to encourage good brushing until they are old enough to understand proper oral health on their own.