3 Tips For Getting Your Child To Brush His Or Her Teeth

Do you struggle to get your child to brush their teeth? Are you worried for their future dental health if they refuse to take proper care of their teeth? Proper tooth care is essential in order to prevent cavities and other future issues. Unfortunately, playing video games or even doing homework frequently come out ahead of brushing teeth on a list of tasks a child would wish to do. In order to get your child to brush their teeth on a regular basis, there are a number of things you can try, including:

Professional assistance: While you may have experience with your own child or children, a family dentist is going to have experience with many different kids. As a result, they'll have various means and methods of persuasion that you might not have considered but that will actually work well. In addition, sometimes a child needs to hear something from someone besides "mom" or "dad" in order for them to believe that what they're being told is true. Being told the ins and outs of dental care by a dental professional may be all the push they need to get them to brush their teeth regularly.

Offer incentives: Children don't have jobs. Their job is to learn how to be a fully-functioning adult that performs necessary tasks. You get paid for doing things at work that you hate, so shouldn't your kid be rewarded for doing important things that they hate? If your child follows the instructions of your family dentist and brushes their teeth without being told, you could reward them financially on that day but non-monetary incentives can work just as well. For younger children, being allowed to put a sticker of their choice on a chart may be sufficient. For an older child, a good reward may be allowing them to stay up for an extra half hour in the evening.

Different dental care tools: If you've ever tried a food or candy that was a favorite of yours when you were younger, and then wondered how you could ever stomach such a thing in the first place, you know that adult and child taste buds can be very different. When all adults and children in a household are expected to use the same types of toothbrushes and toothpaste, this is where problems can arise. Adult toothpaste is often too strongly flavored for children, even pre-teens and younger teens. Your family dentist can recommend various options available in your area that you might not have been aware of, but that your child might accept more readily than what you're using now.

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