Tooth brushing time can be quite a chore for parents, as resistance comes in the form of a tantrum from toddlers and disinterest from older children. Your kiddos could be resisting brushing and flossing for a number of reasons –sensory discomfort, impatience, the taste of the toothpaste, pure rebellion– but that doesn’t mean you can try to encourage them. We’ve gathered up a bunch of activities that can make oral hygiene more fun for your child and instill healthy dental habits for life.
Play music during brushing and flossing. It takes the child’s mind off the task and can also be a great way to help them “time” their brushing. Youtube has a lot of fun brushing songs videos that also can be fun while your child brushing his or her teeth.
Make a game out of brushing. When you brush at the same time, play monkey see, monkey do and have them copy you (or the other way around) as you move the brush around your mouth in silly, fast or slow, or switch to brushing your tongue. Stop and go can also be a fun one. Think of this game like red light green light for brushing.
Things to do between brushing can include crafts, games that teach about the mouth and healthy eating for oral health, and playing dentist office to alleviate fear of dental exams. Pinterest offers a ton of these options. Our favorites include:
“Egg Activity: Show your child a hard-boiled egg, and then ask her about the purpose of the shell. Discuss how the egg shell helps to protect the rest of the egg and compare the egg shell to your teeth. Place the egg shell in a jar of vinegar and ask your child what she thinks will happen to the egg. After a couple of days, remove the egg from the jar. Have your child observe that the shell is soft and partially destroyed. Explain that the same thing can happen to teeth if they are not taken care of properly. This activity will help her to understand the importance of teeth brushing and flossing.” ~ Livestrong.com
“..we used this model of a mouth to show what happens when food hides where the brush can’t get to it. The girls used floss to clean between the egg carton teeth to get the bits of “food” wedged in.” ~A Sense of Wonder Play School
Create a white board style brush away the cavities project done over on Hoyby Crafts Blog.
A trip to your library or local book store can get you a treasure trove of books on brushing and flossing teeth that you can use to make your children more excited about brushing. Babble.com has a great list of ten books to get you started. A librarian might also have some suggestions. We love many of these, but HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A MOOSE BRUSH IS TEETH and BRUSH YOUR TEETH PLEASE (a pop up book! ) are two of our favorites.
Both My Kool Smiles and Healthymouth.org have a whole series of dental-based activity pages to choose from. With dozens of topics in fun forms like coloring sheets, nature walk maps, word searches, and crafts, it’s a one stop shop for parents and teachers.
We found many of these ideas on Pinterest, a smorgasbord of fun and creative ideas about making dentistry and oral care appealing to little people.
Brushing and flossing can be fun for your children. By doing fun activities and modeling how important it is, you will see a different attitude towards it and make oral cleaning time more enjoyable for both of you.
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