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Tooth Brushing
No Job for a Kid! By Wes Andrues
It seems most every parent confronts a universal truth early in the process of rearing a child: Kids like to do for themselves. Whether eating, bathing, walking or climbing precariously on a jungle gym, children naturally display a need for independence as they graduate from baby to toddler to preschooler. Parents must often make the difficult choice to stand back, watching trial and error take its course.
While giving them a certain degree of freedom is perfectly normal, there are some obvious areas in life where children should not be trusted to do exclusively for themselves. One of these areas is dental hygiene. When it comes time for tooth brushing, they naturally prefer to do the job on their own, resisting the intrusion of a brush stuck into their mouth. However, children are not physically or mentally equipped to be trusted with their own dental destiny, and even the most hands-off adults must recognize that tooth brushing is no job for a kid.
laborious and at times downright difficult, parents must be motivated by the reality that the consequences of not brushing are far worse than the struggle the activity presents. Moreover, they should not be lulled into the false notion that just because their child is able to move the brush back and forth against their teeth that actual brushing is taking place.