Help with teeth cleaning in 17month dd

[Tippytoes]

My dd has around 12 teeth and she will not let me clean them. She will chew on her toothbrush herself if she holds it, but thats it.

I do it every day though and she cries and cries and cries, I have to literally hold her arms away.

My ds used to be like this too, and I was a bit like, ok do it tomorrow, but he ended up having an abcess and teeth out and a few fillings, so you can imagine that I never want to go through that again.

Any tips on how to do this?

Thanks

is she teething? my dd will not let me touch her teeth when she's teething, nor will she chew on toothbrush. I don't push it when i know her mouth hurts.

i clean her teeth every night in the bath. she gets in, gets soaped/bubbled etc and then i say "in a fun voice" teeth clean, i clean mine with lot of "wow" and "hooray mummy" and showing my teeth, she laughs, i scrub her front ones very quickly, give tons of praise, and laugh loudly and make a right sho and dance out of it. Then i say "again" and do the bottm ones, again the melodramatic and then i hand her the brush to chew on, that way she'll get the back ones!!

i could force her to clean, but firstly i fight wih her about so much at the moment (15 months and very independent) that i dont have the energy to do this, and secondly i want her to know cleaning teeth is a good thing (i realise this is a sensitive subject, this is just my view)

HTH

I'm with you Tippytoes, I watch with interest...

I used to clean teddy's teeth first or clean them in front of a mirror so she can see what's going on.

My problem is that he wants to do it himself and he's clearly incapable of doing anything but chewing the toothbrush and sucking off the toothpaste.

DD has got bad recently too - I think she's teething again though. I have had a little bit of success by making up silly teeth cleaning songs and making opening mouth wide really fun. To be honest i give up on days she screams and screams as i'm worried i'll put her off for life. on those days i let her do it herself but i talk her through it and make her do top, bottom etc and try to show her what really good scrubbing is by cleaning my own teeth at the same time. Not much help, sorry, but in same boat. good luck.

DD (20 months) has got worse about this again recently, but I seem to be having some success with "Mummy helps A. do her teeth' (the rule being that Mummy always helps first). She still tries to insist that only she do it, but the idea of being 'helped' seems to be catching on.

It's a struggle, though.