Teach A Child To Brush While It’s Still Fun

As a parent, your first instinct is often to help your kids when they’re having trouble or to give in when they ask for something. But that’s an urge you need to resist for a variety of reasons: children who expect everything to be done for them quickly get spoiled, and kids with an independent streak don’t like it when their parents keep them from doing “grown-up stuff.”

That love of doing things only grown-ups get to do is why kids have a lot of fun doing things adults think of as boring chores. It can even include basic stuff like choosing your own clothes to wear, putting dishes in the dishwasher and brushing your own teeth. Toddlers can’t do any of these things right away, and they love it when they become big enough to handle everything on their own.

That’s why it’s important to teach kids how to brush and floss as soon as they’re able to handle the chore, and it’s important to teach them how to brush and floss the right way so that good habits will stick with them. This can mean putting a two-minute timer in the bathroom so that they’ll know when they can stop brushing, or else using an electric toothbrush that features a two-minute reminder. As for floss, it’s important to rub along the base of both teeth in each gap to really get the plaque out and not just the food pieces.

If you wait too long to teach your kids, or if you aren’t persistent enough to make sure their brushing and flossing become a solid habit, that may turn into a problem for them later in life. Good oral hygiene is key to preventing cavities and keeping your teeth in good condition for as long as possible, but it only works if you brush and floss consistently and throughout your entire life. That even includes baby teeth since the bacteria that live in a cavity can spread out and wear down the permanent teeth that share the same mouth.

So while you may think you’re doing your kids a favor by taking over brushing their teeth when they get it wrong, you’ll do them a bigger favor if you teach them how to do it right as soon as they can learn and then making sure they brush right every time after they get the hang of it. Between that and a good flossing technique, learning good oral hygiene habits early can help them keep their teeth for the rest of their lives.