How can I do this better - DS 2y3m & teeth

[SeatOfMyPants]

How can I do this better?
We've bought him a book where he can brush the monkey/lion/hippos teeth - he LOVES that
He just HATES teeth brushing. He can't/won't do it himself so we have to do it, which is tantamount to torture as far as I'm concerned, but I do understand that it would be worse if we didn't do it....
He understands so much at the moment, but no matter how much we try to tell him how important it is to do it (and we try in many different ways using different words/analogies) he really doesn't understand why we do it to him.

I'm at the end of my tether. I hate seeing him so upset and I want to make the experience much more positive for him.

Any tips?

Well, at that age, the cleaning is really for you to do. He's just playing.

Our dentist says parent should do the cleaning twice a day until at least age 7.

DS hates tooth brushing, and it is a trigger for him (just diagnosed with autism) but we have persisted - not least because DH and I both have not great teeth.

Getting the battery powered toothbrush seemed to help a bit. I usually sing a silly song while doing it. There is an aquafresh song I think which other friends tell me is great.

PP is right, there's an Aquafresh app (it's free) that plays a song for two minutes with a dancing toothpaste blob. When the two minutes is up you earn stars to buy the little blob-man some clothes.

It's better than I'm making it sound.

My two have both gone through the phase where they hated having their teeth cleaned at about this age.

When this happened with us I just made sure we kept it as part of the routine and that it was fun. I let mine choose their own toothbrush (from a selection I provide) and always give them the chance to have a go at brushing before I finish off ( when they let me).

Its a bit silly but we also have a bit of a joke at the end where they smile to show off their shiny teeth and I make a joke of having to look away because they are so shiny.

I try to distract my three year old by making a game of it and asking what kind of teeth he has today - shark, tiger, crocodile etc. That usually gets him to open his mouth at least.

We also take turns , so he goes first and then it's my turn.

The song sounds like a good idea too, must try that.

I tried distracting him by saying 'oh look there's some peas, theres some sandwich' (basically whatever he'd eaten that day) better brush them away. I also played him the Elmo tooth brushing song (it's on YouTube) and sang that to him. It took a while for him not to protest but we got there in the end.

DD is 22 months and screamed at every tooth brushing until last week when we had a revolution... we now play "looking for the animal in your mouth". She tells us which animals are in there and we chase them with the toothbrush. amazingly there are no more protests.

I tried this a month or two ago and it didn't work, so do try things again even if they didn't work before...