#gentlediscipline

Actually Worked)

My dad is a dentist. I don’t remember exactly how it was when I was a kid, but I know brushing was important. I think my parents brushed my teeth for me until I was quite old.

Anyway, despite having extremely relaxed ideas about what my toddler otherwise needs to do, for example, bed times or lack thereof, being naked most of the time, or eating what she wants when she is hungry, brushing her teeth was the one thing I exerted an iron fisted control. She MUST brush her teeth before bedtime, and if she didn’t want to do it herself or didn’t do a good enough job, boy howdy I was gonna step in and fix that!

Ugh! I shiver just writing that. As you can imagine, this did not go well. She looked horrified when I approached her with the toothbrush, and I am pretty sure she saw right through my singsong voice since she knew it was just a charade. I was going to do something to her, without her consent, and without even trying to make it easier for her. Terrible.

Finally, Hubby had to step in and ask me to make a change. For just two weeks, he asked, couldn’t I let her try to do it herself, and then if that didn’t work, let it slide? Two weeks was not a rotten mouth going to make. So I conceded.

Within a few days, she was doing some brushing on her own. Even the fact that she was interested in her toothbrush made me weak with relief. I made progress talking about how brushing got the “bugs” out of her teeth.

Then one morning last week, I was brushing my teeth and she wandered in, so I gave her her toothbrush with her tiny bit of paste on it. She handed it back to me, saying “done.” I drew on a few techniques I picked up from natural parenting sites and said something like, “I am confused, I wish we could find a way for you to want to brush, because I know it is good for your teeth. Don’t you want to get the bugs out?” She hesitated, and handed me her toothbrush, saying, “Mama help get the bugs out?” and proceeded to let me brush all the surfaces of all of her teeth. That has never happened before.

I know it wasn’t perfect wording for what I said to her, however, the sentiment behind it was sincere and apparently effective. Since then, she has not let me do that to such an extent again, but she brushes her teeth a little every day. And she lets me help a little sometimes.

This has been a great lesson for me. First of all, it reminded me not to shut out my hubby from the decision making process in our parenting. Even though I am the primary caregiver and researcher and reader of all things parenting, doesn’t mean he a) doesn’t have the instinct and b) can’t see what I can’t see in my behavior and actions.

Most of all it showed me the power of conceding traditional parental control. Me wielding the toothbrush was not effective. She anyway wants to model what I do (and I am an insane toothbrusher.) But not if I FORCE her. I was bypassing her natural instincts and desire to imitate. I was injecting my knowledge of dental health into a power struggle. It wasn’t working.

Once I left the power out of it, she was receptive to the idea that toothbrushing was something that happens in the evening, for example, before bedtime. Power struggles are a vortex of pain for toddlers (and their parents).