I Can't Get My Son To....

Hi C., I'm a grandmother to a special needs 2 1/2 year old boy, whom I get nearly every night. I also am a dental assistant to a pediatric dentist. I brush his teeth each night, he gets to brush himself with the dab of toothpaste, and I finish with the over all brushing. He hates it, but I've seen teeth of kids that have had the meds he's had and is still getting, so I feel its worth the fight every night. I basically put him in a headlock under my arm and do a good once over. It takes me less than a minute to get all his teeth and gums covered, and we're done. He gets over the screaming right after we're done. Its a battle thats worth it to me. His teeth were damaged with all the meds and radiation he had while my daughter was pregnant and it continued after his birth. But he has a beautiful smile I feel is worth fighting for. If you work hard enough, you can keep his teeth healthy. He may end up with crowns someday,hopefully not, but his gums are healthy, which is very important to his over all health as well. My daughter lets him brush his own teeth in the mornings. I would like to add, there isn't a kid under 5, special needs or normal, who can do a good job brushing without help, at least once a day, preferably at bedtime. Soft, misformed, or damaged teeth, doesn't mean they have to loose them or have tons of work done on them. Some will have to have work done on them, no matter what you do at home, but no one needs to have tons of work done. Its a battle worth fighting, my dentist tells parents when they tell him, their child won't let them brush their teeth, its no different than changing a diaper, it needs to be done. Be a parent, taking care of teeth is a health issue, not just a smile issue. Good luck:)Sue

I also have a special needs son. We found that an electric toothbrush works better. I can get a whole lot more done in there in the 30 seconds he'll tolerate the brushing with my SonicCare than with a regular toothbrush.

Also I brush his teeth right after a bath so he's all wrapped up in a towel and can't really fight me off.

dont fight with him about it. instead have a timer in there with you and both of you brush your teeth for 2 mins, make a game of him showing up mommy lol by doing a better job of getting his teeth clean that mommy dose. and then for the reward of beating mommy by brushing the whole 2 mins have a calender hanging up and allow him to put a sticker on each day that he wins. when its full of his sticker wins do something with him he likes to do. we do it for each week here it works well with a chosen before hand by my daughter reward, and reminders of the reward.

My 8-year-old daughter still battles us on it. Currently she insists that somebody else brush with her (same time, same bathroom). We are talking about getting the tooth tunes thing.

My 19-year-old likes to tell the story of when she and her boyfriend were brushing their teeth at the same time and neither wanted to finish first! (The other person might be doing a better job.)

I have 2 special needs kids of my own.I got my daughter to use one of those electric toothbrushes. We found one of those musical toothbrushes that only plays when you brush your teeth works for my son. They still don't brush as much as they should, but every tiny bit helps. We also let my younget daughter brush my teeth while I brush hers. She thinks she is helping mommy. You could also try reward charts. If he brushes his teeth, he gets a sticker of his choice. Get 5 stickers you get a treat/prize. After awile, make it 10 stickers to get a treat/prize.

You might want to try letting him brush your teeth while you brush his (sit facing each other). That helped when we had a similar issue with our son. You could read the Dr. Seuss Tooth book, does he understand why you need to brush your teeth? I'm sure there are some songs about dental hygiene, if he responds well to music you might want to do a google search and see what you can find that would get him excited about taking care of his teeth. You could do a sticker chart/offer a prize (extra song or story, etc) for when he is a good cooperator and brushes his teeth. Good luck!

When my daughter was 3and 4 I also had the same problem but she was getting cavities so the dentist told me it had to happen. I took her toothbrush and put the paste on it. then I laid her down on the counter next to the sink. (If your bathroom is small you might have to use the kitchen counter.) I had someone else help me hold her while I brushed her teeth. After a while she got the message and started doing it on her own. Good luck. P.

Try talking to his Dentist & see what he or she says. Good luck.

my son use to just brush his teeth with water and no paste and his dentist said that was fine because at least he was trying and brushing the yuck off his teeth. but i do like the idea of the blue tooth paste that shows if they haven't brushed good enough.

Hi C.,

My son - also special needs - used to give me a hard time also. He is also terrified of the dentist (any doctor for that matter) We started playing dentist. I would take one of his dolls (bert, woody or buzz) and we would pretend that they were going to the dentist. Ethan would be the dentist. Then when he finished with the dolls teeth, I get to play dentist. I brushed his teeth while he was laying down. Sometimes we did this in the living room. It seemed earier. I also purchased a electric toothbrush. They have a lot of different characters. Soon, my other two kids caught onto this too. Good luck!

C.,
I have to brush my teeth with my son to get him to brush. At one point We used that Cool Blu- that turned his teeth blue if he didn't brush well enough- but I don't know if it's still on the market or not

Hi, C..

I don't know what his special needs are, but here is something that worked for my daughter. We would make it into a game. We'd tell her that there were sugars in her teeth that were going to try to eat up her teeth if we didn't get rid of them (which is true, to an extent ;). Oh, but here comes "SUPER TOOTHBRUSH" to save the day. And the sugars are saying, "Oh, no! it's Super Toothbrush! He's going to get us! Oh, no!" "Ah, hah! I'm coming to get you, sugars! Here I come!" And she would open her mouth and while Super Toothbrush was brushing, we'd be saying "AAAAAAHHHH! Oh, no! We're being brushed away! Aaaaahhhh!" She loved this and it made things fun.

Another thing we would do is to play dentist. One of us would be the dentist in the bathroom and we'd say, hmmm, I wonder where our next patient is? She's late! I'll have to call her and remind her. So we'd pretent to call her on the pretend phone and she would answer and we'd say, "is this Mrs. Beegbe?", and we'd ask where she was. Then she'd pretend to get in a car to drive to the dentist, and she'd knock on the door and we'd say, "ah, Mrs. Beebe, I'm so glad you made it! Now I see you're just here for a cleaning..." And go from there, and she'd get up on the "chair" (my or hubby's lap) and we'd examine her teeth and say, "ah, everything looks fine. We'll just give you a quick cleaning and you're all done". something like that. It turned out to be really fun for us all.

I hope you can find something that will work for you. We found that games were the best way.

Peace,
K.

Even though he's not special needs, he is very stubborn so when my son didn't want to brush his teeth, we had to try several different things. My husband found a tooth brush called Tooth Tunes. It plays music while you're brushing teeth. Now my son looks forward to brushing his teeth every day. Along with the tooth brush, we got a tube of toothpaste with his favorite character on it and now my husband says, "hey you, it's time to brush your teeth" using the character's voice. My son loves it.

This is pretty goofy...but it works on my four and two year old children! They brush for a bit and then I take the toothbrush and try to find things "hiding" in their teeth. With my daughter it's "sugar bunnies" and Winnie the Pooh characters. My son likes me to find dinosaurs. I brush each tooth and act like I'm really looking. I save the favorite (e.g. Christopher Robin or T-Rex) for the last tooth and make a big deal of it. With my son we brush out the T-Rex and we rinse him down the sink!

My daughter (7) and I brush our teeth together. In fact she gets very upset if I do it without her. We also have am egg timer so she knows when we are finished.

Hi C.,
How old is your son & what special needs does he have? With my child (who is not special needs but is just stubborn) I would have him "brush" his stuffed dog's teeth first & then I would brush his. We also had a 5 year old Deaf child living with us who couldn't do anything when we got her (she'd been very neglected). I would stand in front of the mirror with my own toothbrush & show her how to do it. Sometimes she would let me help her & sometimes she wouldn't open her mouth at all. I know how frustrating it can be!
Good luck!!
T.