Kids in general either hate brushing their teeth or they simply couldn’t care less. However, it is important to teach your kids how to brush their teeth to avoid dental and other health problems. with little patience, creativity, and a helpful tool, you should be able to get the kids to brush their teeth right away.
Teaching Your Children How to Brush
For preschoolers
It’s relatively easy to teach preschoolers, as long as it’s fun for them and is done through rhythm and rhyme. Let your kids know that there are germs that we can’t see living on their teeth and it’s important to get rid of them. You can even make a song about teeth brushing.
When teaching your kids how to brush their teeth, first show them the optimum way to go about it. Once you have demonstrated the up and down, round and rounded process of brushing pearly whites, hand your kids their brushes and let them try. Once they are able to do the whole brushing process themselves, make the event and exciting and joyous one. Clap and cheer for your kids. Tell your other family members how good the kids were and have them cheer for the children as well. Have your kids show other family members how they too can brush their teeth.
Things to do:
- Show them how excited you are about brushing, and get even more excited when they brush.
- Help to make brushing a great experience.
- Inquire them to show you how well they can brush their teeth.
- Make it a point to show other family members how good the kids can brush their teeth.
For Grades K-3rd
Children this age learn things through presentation and duplication. Offer your children to watch you as you brush your teeth, explaining things to get better results as you go along. Come up with creative analogies: plaques are hidden bugs that eat away your teeth. The only way to remove them is to brush your teeth
Activities to do:
- Regularly offer your kids to watch yourself brushing.
- Be steady with brushing times
- Produce creative analogies or explanations about cleaning teeth
Grades 4th-6th
For this age, there is no better way to effectively teach your kids to brush their teeth than to show them what happens each time a person does not brush his or her teeth. Gather pictures of people teeth the have serious decay. Or better, get pictures of men and women with rotten teeth. During your visits to the dental practitioner, teach your kids about proper brushing by asking for pictures of men and women who do not brush their teeth and explaining to them, This is what happens to people who do not brush their Teeth.
You can also add that there are health risks when they do not clean their teeth. Some of these include gum diseases such as gingivitis (swollen or inflamed gums), periodontitis, gum infections, bone break down, and tooth loss. It has even been found that gum disease is a likely risk factor for heart disease and stroke for adults.
Activities:
- Ask your dentist to share stories, pictures and information of the hazards of not brushing teeth.
