Dads of STW, did anyone have problems with their baby/toddler refusing to have their teeth cleaned?
If so, how did you encourage them to allow you at ’em?

I thought it was just a phase or teething or such, but its been about 3 months whereby he won’t let us!
I’ve tried all the tactics I can think of…

pin the fecker down, then hold his nose ?

(I think we made up a song of some sort to amuse ours, but pindown should be a goer too 😀 )

Mine never used to like it then figured out that he quite likes toothpaste! Now it’s wide open as soon as he sees the brush.
Perhaps try a different toothpaste?

Assuming you’ve tried different flavour toothpaste and rewards/bribes, then you are into the realms of punishment. No telly, no toy, no story, whatever will upset him most.

And 3 months? Really? Who’s in charge here?

Dentists advice to us was to give him a toothbrush. Let him do it, and concentrate more on good diet. Both have lovely teeth, aged 8 and 5.

And 3 months? Really? Who’s in charge here?

Let’s embed an irrational fear of oral hygiene from an early age? Eh?
🙂

Two person job. One person holds his head and nose, other person holds his jaw open and does the teeth. He will soon learn who is boss.

Just got to get on with it. For about 12 to 18 months with our boy we pretty much had to pin him down in a headlock to do his teeth. I hated having to do it but has to be done. Much better now thankfully at almost 3 and will happily let me do his teeth.

Dentists advice to us was to give him a toothbrush. Let him do it, and concentrate more on good diet. Both have lovely teeth, aged 8 and 5.

We had this with one of ours. But we negotiated a compromise in which she was allowed to do them, as long as we could ‘check’ them after – with a quick once around.

They’re baby teeth anyway, no real serious harm can come (I know you can get decay right through to the adult teeth even at this age, but that’s pretty manky to get like that)

Run round house chasing child with toothbrush. Get child in headlock. When child screams, in with the brush.

Or this is how it works in our house :-/

One of the community dentists told me that at this sort of age, it’s more important they get the fluoride off the toothpaste than anything else.

Showing Tubs junior my mingin’ fillings and getting her a dentists eggtimer helped a little in getting her to stand still and open her mouth for more than 3 seconds at a time

Pinch his nose and tickle him.

Its pretty difficult to get a toothbrush in there with pursed lips, serious head shaking and lots of pushing away with his arms – I really don’t want to go down the forceful route, he’s only 12 months!

Do you have an iPad? Aquafresh do an app which helped get some friends’ son into brushing… Basically, a song about brushing your teethplays while the ‘iconic nurdle’ dances, then you earn stars or coins or something which you use to buy outfits for the nurdle. Free, and no in-app purchases, a couple weeks of brushing and he’ll have all the stuff.

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/aquafresh-brush-time/id661737439?mt=8

This kid was early threeish, so may be v different, but maybe?

We had bother with our little one about this time, total meltdown at the suggestion of a brush going near her mouth after initially being ok with. We tried the strong arm approach but this just made her hysterical so that lasted a night. Then we got her a step and turned the top on, she plays at splashing and while she’s distracted I brush her teeth and she’s fine. Eventually that stopped working as she wanted to brush herself. So she “brushes” (eats the toothpaste off the brush) and eventually I convinced her to let me brush her teeth once she was done. Took a while though. Good luck!

Try your little one’s toothpaste yourself. The aquafresh toddler one is unbelievably vile.

i got Euan to do animal noises. When he does a tiger roaring, in goes the brush.

Sprinkle icing sugar on the toothpaste to make it sweeter. Kids love sweet stuff.

We got him a Bamse toothbrush (a cartoon bear that he likes) and I stood next to him and brushed my teeth at the same time and he just copied. Also he enjoyed playing with the tap. Good luck !

Sit on the edge of the bath, sit kid on left leg with their right arm under your left armpit.

Hold the toothbrush in your right hand and restrain their left hand with your left.

They’ll probably be crying by this point which conveniently opens their mouth.

We had this for about a week before she decided she would rather brush her own teeth.

Edit: this was from my mum who’s a special needs teacher who worked at a residential school for a bit, apparently it get trickier when they get to teenage years.

I got a £5 electric barbie toothbrush from boots. Worked for my daughter. Had some horrible moments before though trying to hold her head still and forcing a toothbrush.

kick his teeth out

I put on Shaun the sheep when our boy is getting ready for bed, press pause when he holds up teeth cleaning or getting undressed.

In front of the mirror. Works every time.

After a frustrating weekend of Daffy jnr stubbornly refusing to drink from open cups …on Sunday I warned him, “drink it or wear it, Sunshine”

One change of clothes later and drinking from cups was back on the menu.

Pick your battles, he will get a new set of teeth. If he is still doing it at 6 worry.

Babybgoode didn’t like it at all. The bribe of stickers if he did worked a treat. His headboard on his bed is now plastered in a year and half’s worth of stickers!

Still works and now solidly forms part of the bedtime routine…

Don’t worry about t he physical efficiency of the cleaning it’s not important at this stage at all. At 12 months the teeth are almost self cleansing provided they are on reasonably fresh unprocessed food. Just let them lay with the toothbrush while you do yours. I defy them not to copy you in the end. Only use a TINY amount of paste, less than half a pea sized amount, more can ironically cause problems with their adult teeth in some succeptible people.
More important is diet. Frequency of sugar input, in all it’s forms. Will post a tongue in cheek but of simple dietary advice later.
Yes they will get another set even if you screw these up. But they will be permanently affected in many ways if you screw up the deciduous (baby) teeth. It is not a simple case, of start again, all is forgiven. It isn’t sadly.

See these that we give out to our patients, helps to get the message across. We have many middle class parents that cannot grasp why their kids have holes in their teeth despite using ” a good brand of toothpaste and an electric brush”………… It is all about diet, or more importantly, eating patterns. Read on, and feel free to pass on, please, especially to grandparents.

Diet for a healthy mouth, or how to ward off the evil decay spirits

Would you like to never get another cavity? It is possible. In fact, if you follow just a few simple rules, you are almost guaranteed never to get another cavity.

Here’s how it works. Everybody has germs in their mouths. Decay happens when certain types of these germs turn sugar into acid. This acid causes decay. The good guy is your saliva. The saliva neutralises the acid produced by the germs (stick around, this will get more interesting). It takes 2 hours however after having anything with sugar for your teeth to stop dissolving.

So, your teeth are dissolving for 2 hours after you have anything with sugar. If you have 3 meals a day and nothing in between, your teeth dissolve for 6 hours a day. They seem to cope OK with this. Every sugary snack between meals adds an extra 2 hours to your dissolving time. If you’ve got enough fingers count up how many meals or snacks or drinks with sugar you have a day. Multiply by 2 (use toes if necessary) and you get how much of the day your teeth spend decaying.
If its 10 hours or more, you may as well reserve a seat in our chair for lots of fillings.

Public enemy number one, the sugary snacks are the obvious ones like sweets, lozenges, biscuits and cakes, but this also includes drinks with sugar such as soft drinks, fruit juice, coffee or tea with sugar. Did you know that a large MacDonald’s coke has 22 teaspoons of sugar? It’s full of acid too, which really wrecks the teeth. A cup of juice is healthier, but still has 6-8 teaspoons. The worst snacks are those you suck on for a long time, especially sour sweets which have built in acid.
Even ‘healthy’ snacks like cereal bars and dried fruit are loaded with sugar.

Before all you chocoholics jump out the window, there is a simple solution. All you have to do is bundle up all your snacks and juice and include them with the 3 major meals. Presto! No more decay. If you must gobble or nibble between meals some things are OK. Most dairy products, fresh fruit (not dried) and vegetables are fine to have as snacks. Meat, cheese and the like are good too. You can drink water, milk, coffee or tea unsweetened or with sugar substitute, and watered down juices in moderation. Juice with fizzy water tastes good, and has a lot less sugar and calories. Diet soft drinks and sugarless gum are sort of OK but don’t overdo it.

It sounds easy and it is. The rest is up to you.

And first visit to the dentist…..18 months to two years. Simple in and out. We often don’t get a proper look until three or four visits in, but that’s still only three years of age or so. But more importantly it gets YOU, the parent switched onto healthy diet info at an early stage, before you start feeding them cra……… Rubbish.
Frequency of processed carbs is what causes tooth decay. Clean them all you like…. I have to treat lots of lovely shiny middle class cavities that get brushed quite well between their processed carb snacks.
“But they’re natural sugars ” they say. “
” yup, and they’re natural cavities your kids are getting!”
sadly we don’t have any natural fillings!

Good info thanks – trying to stop my wife giving our son cordial to drink so much.

Nothing wrong with cordial, if it’s at meal times. In between, it’s a processed carb, and guess what it causes.

General rule of thumb is this.:
If it came straight off the tree, or straight out of the ground, it’s probably going to be ok. If not, it’s almost certainly got processed carbs in, that you are not evolved for, and they’ll cause tooth decay. Like the advice says, too often and the cumulative effect will mean only one thing I’m afraid. Holes in teeth. And worse.

Sadly our children’s teeth as a nation are in a shocking state. Did you know, the most common reason for a child to end up in a hospital bed is no longer trauma, but ROTTEN TEETH.

Sadly investment in educating parents in healthy diet re dental health is pretty much non existent. Even worse, thee recent “sugar swaps” dept of health initiative was written by a group of idiots with clearly no idea of what healthy diet is for a Homo sapiens.

But hey, childhood decay damage and face plant trauma keeps me busy, so as they say, every cloud has a silver filling!

Take away his wifi! 😡 That’ll teach him! 😉

We do our boy’s teeth in the bath. First we do them then he does them. He needs to do ‘lion teeth’ (together) and ‘hippo teeth’ (wide open mouth) and we make a big thing of looking in the mirror and commenting on his lovely white teeth.

We also used to let him brush ours whilst we were brushing his. It distracted him long enough for us to get his done.

Have you tried him on liver flavoured dog toothpaste?

That stuff is delicious.

Calmly ask him over and over again to do it until it is done. After 3 months it will be hell, but he needs to know you will never give up. Do the same the next day, by the end of the week it will not be a problem.

Ours was a fairly late teether, so serious brushing wasn’t till he “understood” us a bit better than the OP’s perhaps, but his willingness (or lack thereof) to have his teeth brushed is a mystery to me. Some days, he sits there calmly and lets me scrub to my hearts content. Some days it’s just The. Worst. Thing. In. The. World! 😆 I think the most important thing is that he learns that it’s going to happen whether he likes it or not. 😐 (as much as I want him to willingly participate in any activity which is good for him…sometimes you gotta be the boss I suppose.)

I’m sure I read on babycentre or some such that it’s ok to let them have a go themselves, but the adult should always do a proper brush to finish – as they tend to just roll the brush at the front of their mouths sucking all the toothpaste off and not really clean properly.

We’re at the stage now of getting a step for him to do it over the sink and might try that app as long as it’s not bombarding him with sinister subliminal corporate brand recognition weevilness. 😀

My wee one (18 months) loves doing his own teeth. This involves sucking all the toothpaste of the brush, without any discernible brushing motion. Once a week at best we manage to get some brushing motion in, but as others have said at this age I really wouldn’t be worrying about it. Dentist is pretty happy that as long as he is using and getting used to a brush it’s little problem. He’s got a checkup tomorrow though, so if this is a bad approach I’ll report back!

I followed someone helpful STWers advice.

Sing ridiculous song about jungle animals.
Pretend there’s a lion inside his mouth.
Quick! Brush it out! Woooooo! We got it!

So he did a go himself first whilst this was going on. Then he was telling us there was another crocodile at the back and another giraffe at the top and so on. Mouth open, we did a quick once over, get the last tiger out, job done.

The key thing was to try and make it a bit fun.

Now he does them himself pretty good, although we still do a quick once around and will do for a couple more years.