Child dental advice to take on board before your child’s first dental check up.

Wondering how to brush your child’s teeth properly? There are several different methods for brushing your child’s teeth, but the easiest is to be behind the child with the child facing the same direction as you. For younger children and toddlers you may have them seated on your lap and then brushing the teeth is very much like brushing your own teeth.

You may want to lie the child down on the couch with their head on your knee or do it on their bed. As the child gets taller they can stand in front of you on a stool/step, facing away from you again, and you brush the teeth.

Quite often tooth brushing is not the simple task we think it should be and toddlers voice their disapproval to the parents. This can be very difficult right before bed time. It is important that you make sure that the brushing is done. 

Your toddler is just trying to control the situation the only way they know how- by making a lot of noise. If you give in when this is happening the child will quickly learn that this is how to get out of things and the behaviour will be repeated time and again. It takes a lot more effort to be persistent but the negative behaviour will stop in the end. You cannot cause any damage to your child by ensuring tooth brushing is done properly every night.

In difficult cases it may be necessary for the child dentist to show you techniques for two people to help with brushing or alternative strategies depending on your situation. If you’d like one of our pediatric dentists to help you with this, please make a appointment for your children’s first dental check up involving a walk through of proper teeth brushing technique. 

Are you unsure how to brush your child’s teeth properly. To book your child’s first dental appointment covering this topic, call our ABC Pediatric Dental Clinic in Buderim.