Struggling to brush toddlers teeth...advice please

[deniselovesdrawing]

Good morning all,

As the tittle suggests, I am looking for advice/help on how to brush my little one's teeth. She's 18 months and fiercely independent.

Bedtime routine is a struggle. I try to brush her teeth properly but it always ends up in tears and tantrums.

She likes doing it herself and gets excited when she's handed the toothbrush however she is sucking on it and just moves it around her teeth not actually cleaning them. I only get in to try to brush her back teeth but she immediately closes her mouth, bites the toothbrush and starts crying.

Anyone experience something similar, what do you do? I don't want to make bedtime horrible for her :(

Any advice/help would be greatly appreciate it :)

Have you tried letting her watch something whilst you brush? We had the same issue, at around the same age. Ever since (he's 2 now) it has been a lot easier. He knows the routine - we let him watch as he brushes his teeth, then he has the option to have a go (sometimes he does, sometimes he's not bothered).

YouTube videos that have helped us - hey duggee tooth brush song and Finny the shark brush your teeth song

Hope this helps!

My DD is 22 months and she insist brushing her own teeth which means biting the brush. I let her do that while I brush mine and try to get her observe how I do it. Then I just take her and brush hers very quickly. She doesn't like it but I just don't give her any other option.

xylitol mints. They are very small you get loads in a box. They help prevent cavities as the bacteria can’t thrive with the xylitol. The child thinks they are getting a ‘sweetie’ reward for letting you clean their teeth. Only thing that got grandson to stop raging so we could clean his teeth.
They do have a slightly laxative effect so only one a day.

I agreed with mine that they would do the actual brushing and they'd let me just do a "final polish" to get the bits they couldn't see.

This was and still is my DD! She's just turned 2 and is a lot better at letting me do them now but she still wants to do them herself first. Best way I found when she was that age was doing them in the bath, I would also do mine with her in the bath and try and make a game of it so let her brush mine and then I'd do hers. Don't get me wrong it's not a 100% success rate and there's still mornings/evenings when she refuses but now she's a bit older she has a step and stands at the sink with me and does hers while I'm doing mine. Her nursery also get them to do it after their lunch and do it along to a song so it might be worth looking on YouTube for a tooth brushing song. I'll also say, please don't put too much pressure on yourself and get stressed about it, she'll get there. xx

Thank you, not a bad shout. We usually start bedtime routine with a bath time and we both brush our teeth in the bathroom. I’ll let her have a go at my toothbrush in hopes that she gets used to it. I’ll give that a go and see how we get on

Thank you for your reply. Your post literally reminds me of my little one. We have the same routine and even put songs about teeth brushing but barely any success 😭

My little one bites on the toothbrush as well whenever Intry to brush her teeth at the back. She absolutely hates it and starts crying 😭 I try to push forward even though she doesn’t like it but it always ends up in tears

Chewing the brush and moving it around her mouth is doing more good than you might think so don't worry too much.

I am wondering if there are any other ways of brushing their teeth? Somebody on the thread mentioned mints but anything else that has helped your little ones?

I do one toothbrush each and we both brush at the same time (ie I brush, he puts the toothbrush in his mouth and gets in the way). He got bored of the Hey Duggee brushing song so now we watch Numberblocks and he is so transfixed he just lets me get on with it.

we had this - I took the attitude that building good habits was more important than getting perfectly clean teeth every time. I always let them brush first on their own, and then when they would let me I would finish. Sometimes they let me, sometimes not, but I didn’t let it become a source of conflict.

the ‘hey dougee’ tooth brushing song is great - I would play it via YouTube while they brushed their own teeth. Helpful visuals and instructions, like move to the back teeth.

when they were a bit older (3-4yo maybe? Can’t remember exactly) I got them electric toothbrushes, which helped improve independent brushing.

6yo now and get glowing reviews from dentist.

Start as you mean to go on - do you want your dd avoiding tooth brushing in favour of mints when she is older?

it is more important that she develops positive associations with tooth brushing (it becomes part of a routine that she would miss, appreciation of clean teeth, etc.) that she will carry forward through childhood and adulthood than she perfectly maintains baby teeth.

To be honest I just do it after dinner while he's watching one of his favourite programmes. When he was younger the deal was that he could watch an episode of something but he had to get his teeth brushed at the same time and it's stuck. Then we do bath, story and bed. In the morning he just watches on of these 2 minute long teeth brushing songs from YouTube while we do it. I have a playlist made of some nice ones and he chooses a song to watch.

He's 2 and a half and I don't bother getting him to do it in the bathroom in front of a mirror. We'll move on to that when he's a little older, right now all I care about is giving them a thorough brushing.

He's always floating about us in the bathroom so he sees us brushing our teeth too and knows it's what we have to do to "clean the porridge off our teeth" or whatever.