- How do I get my kids to brush their teeth?
Open wide.
Okay, so at least once a week someone will write to me,
my kid refuses to brush their teeth.
What do I do?
And I wanna say to you that if your kids brush their teeth
like a Swiss train,
that's great but this video is still relevant for you,
you'll see why.
Hey, are you ready to love parenting and parent from love?
Then slam that subscribe button
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'cause I wanna meet up with you here every single Monday.
The Parenting Junkie.
I am Avital,
I'm a Mindful Parenting Coach, I'm a mother of four.
And I'm on a mission to help everybody reclaim presence,
peace, and play for their families.
And I hope that you will do that with me here right now.
Today, I'm gonna be giving you 10 creative ways
of helping your children to brush their teeth.
Ready to brush some teeth?
Slam on that like button and let's get started.
Number one, model.
This is always my go-to parenting trick
because it works so well.
Children, and particularly toddlers,
are designed to mimic what they see.
And that's why if you're yelling,
bribing, and punishing, they will mimic that.
But, if you're working with them and modeling good behavior,
they'll mimic that.
Model brushing your teeth.
Often children don't see us brush our teeth
'cause we do so at a different time.
So, grab your toothbrush,
have your child grab their toothbrush
and show them how it's done.
It's super fun,
they will naturally use their mirror neurons in their brains
to mimic you and they'll get their teeth brushed.
Easy.
Number two, use music.
Music is highly motivating
and there are some great songs out on YouTube
about brushing their teeth.
♪ Brush, brushy, brush, ♪
♪ brushy, brush, brush, unh ♪
♪ Brush, brushy, brush, brushy, ♪
♪ brush, brush, unh, unh ♪
- Maybe it's with one of their favorite characters
who brush their teeth.
♪ Brush, brushy, up and down. ♪
♪ Brush, brushy, brush ♪
♪ Brushy, brush them round and round ♪
♪ Brush, brushy, brush. ♪
- Using popular media, popular music,
and a nice beat to go with the teeth brushing
can really motivate children to get on that bandwagon
and feel like it's fun.
Now, brace yourself for a masterpiece
and I'll share the song that I made up for my children
about teeth brushing.
♪ Brushy, brushy, brush ♪
♪ Brush, brush, brushy, brush ♪
♪ Brushy, brushy, brush ♪
♪ Brush, brush, brushy, brush ♪
♪ Brushy, brushy, brush ♪
I'm so sorry if I cracked some glass
in your house right now.
Number three, use a timer.
Not too long ago,
one of our dentists gave us a little sand timer
and it has been so great and helpful.
And since then,
we've started using the kitchen oven timer
because it makes it a little bit gamified like,
okay, I know I have to get through this time
and it gets you used to doing a full two-minute brush,
or whatever your dentist recommends.
Number four is to count their teeth like at the dentist.
You could pretend that you're the dentist
and they're at the dentist and this will actually prepare
them for a dentist visit, as well,
so that's helpful, too.
But say, oh can I see how many teeth you have?
One, two, three, as you brush their teeth.
Little children, especially toddlers,
seem to love counting.
Number five,
as you brush their teeth for them you could kind of try
and guess all the things that they've eaten that day.
Toddlers love this game.
So, you're brushing their teeth and you say,
oh I've seen that you had some broccoli,
and I see that you must have had some pasta,
and I see that you ate a fire truck today.
And then they're like, no, no, I didn't eat a fire truck.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
And you have this whole game that
while you're brushing their teeth,
you're kind of going on an archeological dig
to find out what they had for breakfast,
lunch, and supper,
and slipping in some silly ones in the middle, too,
to get them laughing.
Number six, challenge them.
Toddlers and kids love it when adults play the mumbling,
stumbling adult who doesn't know what to do,
who's clueless, right?
So, become contrarian, or challenge them,
or be playful in some other way.
For example, you could say, brushing teeth?
No, why would you need to brush your teeth?
You shouldn't brush your teeth, that's disgusting.
I think stinky, brown teeth are much nicer.
You don't wanna get them all shiny and white, do you?
Ew, you're brushing them.
Ew, stop brushing them.
Yuck, ew, toothpaste, oh my God.
White teeth, I can't even.
That's disgusting, ugh, ugh, ugh.
Hey what's this toothbrush for?
I've never seen one of these.
Does it go in your ear?
Does it go up your nose?
How do you use this thing?
Can you show me?
Whoa, you are blinding me with that brilliance
of your white shiny teeth.
My goodness, I can't even look at you, you're so shiny.
Whoa.
I won't allow you to brush your teeth.
Whoever brushes their teeth is going
to make me very, very mad.
I'll be so mad that I will just explode.
Is this all making sense to you
and can you see how you can apply this
to other limits, as well?
If so, I would love to hear in the comments below.
Give me a love if this is helpful
and let me know how you're going to apply this.
Number seven, role play.
Have your children brush your teeth
and then you brush their teeth, take turns.
Or, role play with a doll,
where they brush the doll's teeth.
Just walking them through it on someone else
rather than having it done to them
can help them to externalize the experience,
get the concept of it, understand it,
see it, process it, and become in control.
When children feel like you are shoving a toothbrush
in their mouth and you're gonna get them with it.
Say ahh!
Then they have resistance because obviously none of us
would like that if someone was coming up to us
and sticking something in our mouth like that,
it feels overpowering.
But, if you empower them with a toothbrush,
show them what the process it,
allow them to do it to you,
even out that power a little bit,
then they're much more likely to cooperate
and allow you to do it to them, as well.
Number eight is to explain it.
Now, this doesn't work for very young children in my opinion
but as children grow older if there's any resistance
to any hygiene rituals,
then explaining why in a short language,
you know, really distinctly,
don't give them a lecture, can be helpful.
For my older children,
who maybe were getting a bit reluctant or a bit lazy
about teeth brushing,
I've shown them pictures of what the consequences
of not brushing your teeth.
And when they see that teeth can really rot
and it does really hurt,
and it does look really awful, then they're motivated.
They get it.
- I need white teeth, right?
- Number nine is to simply hold a firm but empathic limit.
Look, sometimes you don't have a playful bone in your body.
You're dog-tired and you just can't get it together.
Sometimes, you've tried all sorts of different things,
you've been inconsistent,
there have been power struggles,
and you just need your child to do something.
And sometimes that means just holding a limit
and kind of saying,
baby, now's teeth brushing time,
we cannot move onto books until this gets done.
And just staying in that spot,
staying in that discomfort until it gets done.
Sometimes this might provoke a tantrum,
a big meltdown, or a big show of feelings, crying.
And I just wanna say that's a good thing.
That means that you're holding a limit
and your child is using it as a safe space to express
their feelings and let them out.
So, rather than saying you shouldn't be crying about this,
it's just teeth brushing.
Realize the crying isn't about that,
the crying is about other stored emotions
and the fact that they're now hearing you must do something,
and a no, and we're not getting the book
until you've finished brushing your teeth,
means that they have an opportunity
to safely let out something.
So let them go through the whole entire cry,
but stay with the idea that we are not moving on
until this gets done.
I'm here, I love you,
I realize you don't wanna brush your teeth,
we can't move on to anything else until this gets done.
This isn't right for all parents and all children
but if you can hold that space empathically,
somewhat peacefully,
not get overly involved or enmeshed,
or try and fix it for your child
and let them have their feelings out,
and if your child is the type of child who needs that,
then it can actually be really helpful.
I have one kid that's like that,
that just needs to have a good cry
and then they can move on and brush their teeth.
This shouldn't be happening every night,
or every morning, or whatever,
but from time to time if there's push back
about little power struggles like that,
sometimes it's because children need the limit,
they need to have Dr. Laura Markham called
a scheduled meltdown.
And number 10 is just a pro tip for you.
Which is to have a set of toothbrushes wherever
is most useful for you.
In Present Play, we call this strewing for flow.
Leaving things out in a way that helps you
with your goals, such as brushing your children's teeth.
If they are in an upstairs bathroom for example,
but you need to get out the door,
then maybe you're missing teeth brushing
because you haven't set up your home
and your design in accordance to your needs.
So, have a set of toothbrushes in the kitchen, for example.
Or, by the front door,
or wherever it is that works for you.
We have one in the kitchen and in the upstairs bathroom
and that way when they're going to bed at night,
we can brush our teeth.
We do so in the bath during bath time,
or we have it in the kitchen
when we're ready to leave the house,
that's a perfect place for us to do it,
just after we've finished having breakfast.
So, set yourself up,
and I like to include a little mirror.
A little, cheap,
plastic mirror on a stand that children can look
at themselves while they're doing it.
It helps them to get it right,
to make sure that they're getting to the back sections
of their teeth, et cetera.
Now, this strewing can go on to include having your timer,
having a little bowl with dental floss available
for children and that kind of thing.
Whatever you need to do during
that teeth brushing time go for it.
Now, I will just say that some of my Instagram folks
said that having an electric toothbrush changed
the game for them with their kids.
So, maybe that's something that would work for you, as well.
Toothbrushing is a perfect example of a limit
where we can't really allow for natural consequences.
If our children don't brush their teeth over months
and months then their teeth will rot
and that will our responsibility as the adults
who knew better and should have done better by our children.
So, I just wanna give you a quick summary
of what we spoke about
and you can apply this to any other limit.
So, one is doing it first.
Mirroring the behavior that you wanna teach.
Two is singing a song using popular media
to tell the story and making it fun.
Three is using a timer together,
saying this is the time that we're gonna be doing it for
and watching it visually to help move along that behavior.
Four, five, six,
and seven were all to use playfulness
in order to get this behavior done.
So, doing it on a doll,
counting their teeth, recording everything they're eating,
or becoming a mumbling,
stumbling adult who doesn't know how it's done.
Can you show me how toothbrushing is done?
Number eight was using logic and explaining
the consequences of not brushing your teeth.
And number nine was if all else fails,
or even not if all else fails,
just holding a firm limit
and not moving on until this gets done.
And number 10, was a tip to set yourself up for success
by strewing the right things that you need
in the right places.
Sometimes things don't get done
because they're not easily accessible.
Now, before we move on if this was helpful for you,
or could be helpful for anyone that you know,
please share it with them,
tag them over on Instagram.
I just wanna shout out to everyone
over on Instagram Stories.
I posted a story awhile ago asking people,
how do you get your child to brush their teeth?
And I got so many great responses from you guys
which I have incorporated into this video.
So, this is totally a crowdsourced video
of parenting advice and I would love
to see you over on Instagram,
follow me @ Parenting Junkie.
And you can dm me over there,
interact with my stories,
I would love to get to know you better.
If you want even more help and support
from a like-minded community of peaceful parents,
then join my Facebook Group,
Love Parenting with Avital.
I would love to welcome you in there.
Now slam on that subscribe button
because next week, here's what's coming.
I'm gonna give you an updated tour of our playroom.
Especially the changes I've made to make
my six-month old welcome whilst not disrupting
the play of my older children.
I hope you're gonna find this helpful.
See you next week.