Since the time we incorporated oral hygiene into her bedtime routine, Hannah has gotten used to the idea of sticking her toothbrush (coated with\u00a0a tiny amount of\u00a0sweet toothpaste) into her mouth, to mimicking mommy in brushing her teeth (barely!), and rinsing her mouth.<\/p>\n
There was a time when she would stubbornly refuse to let go of her toothbrush to let mommy do a thorough ‘brush-through’. Once again, distraction worked for us (most of the time). I’d let her bring along a toy\u00a0or an\u00a0object of some sort for her brushing session and suggest that she ‘play’ with her toy while letting me brush her teeth. Our usual standard procedure: both Hannah and mommy brush our own teeth before the big bathroom mirror -> mommy takes over H’s toothbrush to do\u00a0a thorough brushing -> H rinses her mouth and washes her cup and hands (and feet – she likes this)<\/p>\n
Hannah was taught how to rinse her mouth\u00a0when she was about 2 years old\u00a0as I was\u00a0really bothered by her consuming the toothpaste even though the latter was supposed to be safe when swallowed. I demonstrated to her by taking a mouthful of\u00a0tap water from a cup, made noises in\u00a0my mouth during rinsing (and she would laugh at me), and spitting it\u00a0out into the sink when done. It took her a few attempts to get the idea of spitting the water out instead of swallowing it. And she has been enjoying it since (with much\u00a0wetting of her clothes until the problem\u00a0was solved by offering her a bowl to spit into). The downside of learning this new skill\u00a0is that she would occasionally spit out\u00a0other fluids meant for drinking! We had to teach her how to differentiate between the two.<\/p>\n
Below is a video capture of Hannah doing her oral hygiene routine recently.<\/p>\n