Looking for advice or tips please! Ds is 2.5 and has been pretty good at letting me brush his teeth but over the last couple of months or so has become increasingly difficult. We have always let him brush his teeth (he chews on the toothbrush) and then we brush them but now he will say "William brush his teeth" but when he is given the toothbrush might chew on it for a second and then throw it on the floor/in the sink/use it as a drumstick. If me or dh then try to do it he refuses to open his mouth, blows raspberries, makes bubbles/spits the toothpaste, throws his head around, tries to grab the brush...essentially anything to avoid having his teeth brushed. We have tried singing a song (this is the way we brush our teeth...), doing it on his beloved dumper truck first, brushing our teeth with him and trying an electronic toothbrush. None of it has helped! We normally take away toys/don't let him watch Peppa Pig if he's naughty but I don't think this will work if I do it before bed.
Any suggestions please?!
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Parenting
Getting a toddler to brush/let their teeth be brushed
Poppyred85 · 20/07/2015 19:35
I'm pinning.
Nothing has worked for longer than a day.
Apps= fail
Electric Spider-Man toothbrush= fail
Elmo song= fail
Kitty brush= fail
Lightning McQueen paste & brush= fail
Mouth closed 
NOTHING WORKS!
I am so very please other people pin down their toddlers to do this 
Normally I let DD do it herself as she is an independent little madam and will often do anything herself if I threaten to do it for her otherwise. But if she isn't doing it or is only chewing the brush a bit I will do it for her. So far I have not needed to pin her
Things which have worked are:
Doing mine at the same time. She likes to copy me and will pretend to be a grown up.
Making silly noises 'aaaaahhhhhh' for the back ones and 'eeeeeeeee' for the front and sides. The louder the better. Trying to sing a song is good and funny.
We let her choose her own toothbrush and change it quite often so it doesn't get boring. She chews them so they don't last long anyway.
Bribery/threats. No sweets/chocolate/juice EVER AGAIN if she won't brush every day. She has a book about a toothless crocodile and we say his teeth fell out because he didn't brush them enough.
Let her do it but then she has to open her mouth and show me. Then I say oh you missed a bit there and clean that bit. I do a different bit each time so I know they all get a proper clean at some point.
I try not to make too big a deal about it, as long as she makes an effort morning and evening. She doesn't get a lot of sweet stuff and at the moment I am just concentrating on teaching a good habit of cleaning them regularly. IME making teeth brushing a horrible chore to be endured just makes children less likely to do it when they are older and they are eating sweets etc.
If all else fails I tell DD she will end up with teeth like granny if she doesn't brush. DMs teeth are fucking awful
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I told him about sugar bugs that eat teeth and we have to brush them away 
. I know it is a bit mean and scare mongering but it is sort of true (although he once asked if they had claws!) and ever since, I just have to remind him of sugar bugs eating his teeth and we need to brush them all away. He also looked at the back of my tube of colgate which has a picture/diagram of "sugar bugs".
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