Oral Hygiene

As adults, there are personal care activities that we happily farm out to others. Men enjoy going to get a nice shave at the barber shop. Women get their hair blown dry after a haircut and look forward to going to the nail salon to have a mani/pedi.  

But

I can’t imagine anyone wishing that someone else would brush their teeth for them…at all, ever. In fact, I bet it disliking dentist appointments in agreed upon by 99% of all adults surveyed.  Don’t quote me on that, but you get the idea.  This is something we want to do well on our own so other people can be as UNinvolved as possible. We want our teeth to be sparkling clean so we never get cavities and our dental cleanings go FAST.

So, we need to teach our kids how to do it for themselves.

In this installment of Sunday Scaffolding, we cover some ways to help your child become more independent with this daily living skill.

Some Ideas:

1. Lots of little kid shows cover toothbrushing and a quick search of the internet should bring up some pretty great toothbrushing examples.  Video modeling can be a great method for teaching our kids a new skill.
2. You can model for your child. Stand together at the sink and make it fun.
3. They actually sell those giant models of a mouth on amazon (see above) and you can have one delivered to your house and your kid can practice. This is especially great if your child is refusing to let you brush their teeth. Teach them and give them control.
4. Give them a checklist. The one below has Velcro on both sides and Mikey moved the mouth picture to the right side when he was done brushing that section, revealing a checkmark.
5. They even sell toothbrushes now that look like a mouthguard and can be used independently by anyone who can put the device in their mouth and press the on button (they turn off automatically at the end of the brushing cycle).
6. If your child can tolerate it, their teeth will get much cleaner with an electric toothbrush, like they sell at your dentist’s office.  Anyone who has gone through dental work with a child with sensory issues would tell you they are worth the money to prevent cavities.
7. You may want to use a timer to make sure they are brushing for long enough.  There are even apps for this if your child is motivated by technology. We have the Disney Magic Timer by Oral B.
8. Your best friend in this whole process is repetition. Do it at least twice every day and your child will pick it up in time.

Alternatives to Brushing for Them

As your child builds this skill (in other words, when they’re not very good at it yet), you can brush for them once a day at the beginning and then lengthen that out as they get better at doing it on their own.  Also, you can add a toothbrushing session to their first trip to the bathroom when they get home from school. They can use the bathroom, wash their hands (to get rid of all the school germs) and brush their teeth.  This way, they have a higher chance of hitting every area of their mouth each day.

More Oral Hygiene

Flossing is trickier and you should probably keep doing this for them for a while, but when teaching this skill, I did find that the flossers they sell for kids were really helpful.  If you’re concerned about the waste, they make some out of renewable materials now.  Mouthwash seems pretty easy, but I held off with Michael for a while because I was worried about teaching him how to spit (I thought he’d be spitting everywhere, all the time).  That said, when your child is ready, fluoride mouthwash does help prevent cavities.

I promise tomorrow’s entry will be more fun…wink, wink.