16 Month Old - Help with Brushing His Teeth!

Hi!

I have an 18 month old and a 4.5 year old. I still brush the oldest one's teeth for him, the dentist says I need to. Even preschoolers don't do it right and miss places. So, I think you still need to brush your baby's teeth for a few years yet! By the way, we play "dentist" and that really does it for my kids, lay them across my lap, etc.

H.

Hi there J.,
When my son was a little guy, he too liked to suck and chew on his toothbrush. When I took it away to brush his teeth for him he would scream and cry and get furious! So, I just calmly would lay him down and pin him and sing a soothing song while he screamed and thrashed and I brushed his teeth. This went on for a long time, but I felt good knowing I was taking care of my precious baby's teeth!
He is now 11 years old and has great oral care habits and nice teeth. He is not traumatized from me holding him down to brush his teeth! So don't be scared that you will destroy your child for life if you have to pin him down to brush and take care and responsibility for his teeth!! Just do it!!
Finally, one last thing... I am a dental professional and work in a pediatric office and I hear parents all the time trying to coax their frightened child to brush their teeth and frequently they will say, "If you don't brush your teeth then you have to come see the dentist for painful shots and they will have to fix your teeth and it will hurt!" Those are damaging words and please don't say things like that because one day your child may need a filling or other dental work and they will be TERRIFIED to see a dentist who is there to only help! Well, I said my peice and take care of those tiny chompers!

I have 16 month old twins. Before they were one I started brushing their teeths. I gave them the tooth brush and they would suck on it (a wahy to introduce the brush). When they got more teeths, I brushed them. I had one tooth brush for them to play with and another one that I used to only brush their teeths. They also watch my husband and I brush our teeths which made them interested in brushing their teeths. I know only use one toothbrush and took the one they played with away. I still brush their teeths, I do not think they would do the greatest job if I let them do it.

In a couple of months I will let them do it themselves and then re-do it afterwards or watch them to make sure they got all their teeths.

Hope that help, Maybe you can have him brush your teeth make a game out of it.

Have you tried brushing YOUR teeth and showing him how to do it? Give him his toothbrush and brush yours with your own. Since he is a 16 month old, he's likely want to copy what you do. Try doing this once a day for a while and see if he catches on. Good luck!

There have been a couple questions about infant/toddler teeth brushing lately and every time I read that answers and think, "well, I was a bad mom". I rarely enforced tooth brushing until age 4 or more. They are going to lose every tooth anyway. I personally didn't think it was worth the struggle.

Hi J.,
Check out my profile for my experience in this area. There is NO child this age that is capable of thoroughly brushing on their own. If taking turns isn't working (each of you with a brush), then you may need to hold him down and brush while he cries. As far as it being a negative thing, think about how negative it will be if he ends up with Early Childhood Caries and needs fillings! I ended up holding my daughter down at this age and brushing while she cried. She is now 3 1/2 with beautiful teeth and she holds still while I brush (after letting her go first). Once in a while she will try to balk and all I have to do is remind her that if she won't cooperate then she will have to lay on the floor. She knows she doesn't have the choice of not letting Mommy brush. Please, for your son's sake, don't give in. Do whatever it takes to keep those teeth clean! Email me if you want more info.
Sincerely,
L.

PS Sorry if I sound harsh but this topic is VERY important to me as I have seen some terrible cavities in toddlers mouths that could have easily been prevented.

Mine is a bit older, but when he was younger this is what I did...
I would have two brushes. I let him pick the one he wants to use and then I explain (not just the first time, but every time) that he can brush with his brush and mommy is helping him brush with the other brush. Then he can "play" with the one he has and I can brush with the one I have. Yes, it is a tight fit and we do get in each others way but at least he lets me in that way.
Now that he is better about brushing we use a timer. He brushes for 2 min and I let him do it all himself. Then once the timer goes off, I take the brush and finish up so I know they are good an clean!
Good luck, just keep with it. They do get better. The DDS told me that it is more important to establish a good habit of brushing everyday than the quality of the brushing. Once they get older they will get better and better. :)
Best of luck!

It always seems to be a struggle at this age to brush their teeth! My youngest is 22 months and for the past month I'd brush away the food "bugs". I'd relate it to what she has just eaten. Milk bugs, cheese bugs, etc. For a while there she kept kept her mouth open to see what bugs would be brushed next. I've also searched for animals in her mouth. Now she is tired of it, so I also need another tactic. I'm getting some great ideas now!

I bought my 15 1/2 month old a tooth brush and keep it w/ours and every time he see's us brushing he reaches for his and chews on it and sucks and occationally he'll let me help him. He's getting the idea from NOGGIN too. Maybe he'll copy you?

On thing I do with my 22 month old is plan a cool event afterwards like if her uncle who is 10 is downstairs I'll say you have to brush your teeth if you want to see your uncle and then she'll brush. If there is something to anticipate afterwards she'll let me do it to get it over quicker. Otherwise it's a fight and it's hard to always have something afterwards to anticipate. Sometimes I'll say if you let mama brush your teeth I'll let you feed the fish and she really likes to feed them so that works out. Good Luck!

At 16 months, my daughter was doing the same thing. At 21 months she's now brushing appropriately "sometimes." The big win for us was brushing with her as she loves to mimic. Also, a toddler "Tooth Tunes" toothbrush has been awesome. My 5 year old and toddler want to brush their teeth all day long!

Hi there,

My 16 month old loves to chew on her brush, too. I show her how I manipulate the brush when I brush my teeth and try to get her to do it the same way, but I think she's too young to get the hang of it yet. I wipe her teeth with a cotton ball when we're in the tub, and she doesn't mind that. I don't want to give her a negative association with oral hygiene so I haven't forced the issue. I figure they are clean enough between the chewing on the brush and the cotton wiping.

Good luck!

H.

- - -

Well, it's a month and a half later and all has changed. My little darling bit my finger (hard!) while I was trying to clean her teeth last night! Actually broke the skin and drew blood. Ugh. Now I'm reading all of the replies to your posts to get some ideas. For us it is definitely a power struggle. I want so badly for her to have clean teeth, and she knows it. So I think I'll back off for now and see if we can try again later with a new approach.

Let us know what is working for you!

My daughter is the same age and it got alot easier to brush her teeth once I started brushing mine while holding her. That way she could see what I was doing. She still trys to chew on her brush but at least she's opening her mouth for me.

Hi J.,

Have you tried one of the cute battery powered tooth brushes that rotate in circles. They are reasonable at Costco and they made initial brushing fun for both of my grandchildren.

G. c

WooHoo... I seriously was beginning to think I was the only mom having this problem. I even asked my dentist this same question this morning. He suggested buying one of the child electric brushes that sing, he also suggested creating a fun little song while brushing. I have tried making my son say "ahhhh" while we do it, but that lasts for all of 5 seconds then it's back to the crying. I pray for both of us to keep our sanity :-) Good luck and I hope these ideas work for us :-)

Do not make this a power struggle. At this point, you should only be trying to establish a habit. I would not recommend holding down your child. My son is 3, and we brushed when we rememebered, we never made it a fight. He chose his toothbrush, we used an electric or regular. I did/do my turn, your turn. I let him chew the brush, I told him say ee/ee/ee/ ah/ah/ah while I brushed.

Recently, he had his first experience with the dentist's office. I had a cleaning and they dentist's office recommended I bring him along so he could watch mommy get her teeth cleaned. He was very good about it and so were the members of the staff, explaining everything as we went along. When mommy was done, he got to sit in the seat and go up and down. They checked his teeth and said they looked great. I explained that we weren't great about doing the brushing. That's when they told my son, let mommy brush your teeth every night at bed time. He totally bought it and is letting me do it.

My daughter is 19 months old and doesn't like to have her teeth brushed either. We always start with her "brushing" (chewing on the tooth brush) her teeth while I brush my teeth. We have a fun toothbrush holder that she loves to take her toothbrush out of. Then I pick her up (we need to put a mirror down low for her) and put tooth paste on her brush (we just started this and it's made a huge difference) and I brush her teeth. If she fights it (which most nights she does), I let her brush mine while I brush hers. If she won't open her mouth, I won't open mine, etc. Sometimes she puts my toothbrush in her mouth, which grosses me out but it keeps her mouth open long enough and wide enough for me to get in there. Some nights she just screams and that's when I get a good brushing done. I sit on the toilet and lay her back in my arms and brush away.
She went to her first DDS appointment at 1 year and they told us we want to be sure to brush well and floss once her teeth start touching. If she ends up with a cavity before she's 3 she will probably have to be sedated to have it filled. I could not handle seeing my daughter knocked out! so we brush.
She just went in for her second check up and they said, "you may only get 30 seconds in that tiny mouth, so make the most of it." They also told us to start brushing the gums more too.
Two last things. One, we make a HUGE deal out of it if she lets us brush her teeth well with no crying. If she let me do it, we run into the living room and tell daddy, etc. Two, we reward with fluoride (not sure if it's the right thing to do, but we do it). I set it out on the sink before we brush and throughout the brushing I'm saying, "do you want your vitamins?"
Best of luck!
C.

I either brushed for my kids or watched over them carefully until they were 4. Even now, my 11-year-old won't brush his teeth unless 'reminded.'

Sorry I'm not going to be any help here - I'm still trying to get my SIX YEAR OLD to brush his own teeth! Do you have any advice for me with your 8 & 6 year olds??

hey J. :) i wonder what worked with your older kids? we set up a little mirror on the sink basin for our daughter so she could see herself brushing her teeth; it's funner if she can watch herself, and also sat on a low stool next to her so she could brush OUR teeth while we brushed hers! she thinks that's great and after a bit we take over our own toothbrushes for finishing. i don't remember what age we started but it sounds like you're on track there. another thing we did at one point was get her a little battery operated toothbrush so she was getting more brushing for the effort (now we have 3 for her to chose from and only one is battery operated)
good luck!

Hmmm - try an electric toothbrush. They have the inexpensive ones with characters on them. Also, try having one of your older children encourage him to brush "like them". Peer pressure works too.

Best wishes.

Power strugglwa over important issues are hard because sometimes the more they resist our help, the more we try to show them how important something is.,..tug tug..
Try this: there are great little books on toothbrushing, just reread one last night..shows the steps..even the plague guys (we call them sugar bugs) ...there is a poem on how much toothepast, how it is yummy but not for our tummy, how to go up and down, back and forth.and you read it not at brush time and not during the struggle...then that time because his own as he figures it out.

Brush in front of him..the whole routine
Find cartoons (dora, diego, noggin, blues clues) on the topic..they love listening to the characters..and their peers..if a cousin or neighbor is over..let them teach them..

Praise him for being a great big boy brusher and do it more through out the day and ask him for when he needs help....

Lastly, my son is visual so I treat the mouth like a house, the front teeth or the top windwos and doors, the back teeth are bedrooms, the bottom are the kitchen, the living room, etc...he let me go in and make it fun...same with my daughter...

happy brushing

My 16 month old pretty much does the same thing...he likes to suck on it, but he also likes to be the one to hold the toothbrush. The compromise is that I say "Let mommy brush" and I get about 10 seconds of brushing. I also have him watch me brush my teeth and I figure over time it'll improve!

D.

I pretend they have sugarbugs in their mouth from food and we need to catch them.

J.,

I have a 2.5 year old daughter. In the beginning brushing her teeth was difficult for the same reasons you listed. However, after purchasing her an electric toothbrush, it got easier. I bought one with Dora the Explorer on it and she loved it then, and after several replacements with Dora on the them all, she still loves her tooth brush and to brush. My suggestion, buy your son an electric toothbrush with one of his favorite characters on it.
- T.