Welcome back everyone! Ever had trouble getting your kids to brush their teeth? Well, here's another excerpt from my upcoming e-book, Cavity-Proof. I'm hoping to have it available for free download sometime in early January, so keep your eyes peeled!
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Secret 3) Making Oral Hygiene Addictive
Every family is different, and so is every child. What motivates one child may not work for another. But if you hope to create effective oral hygiene habits in your children, the use of rewards, visual aids and technology can REALLY help. Let’s break down each one.
Rewards: As you already know, some children respond very well to positive reinforcement through rewards. One really easy way to reinforce a young child’s oral hygiene routine is to buy a very simple calendar, and a whole bunch of stickers. If I was to implement this with my own family, I’d buy sun stickers and moon stickers. If they brush in the morning AND at night, they would get a sun sticker and a moon sticker for today’s date on the calendar. I used to get stickers when I took piano lessons as a child. Every week that I had practiced and improved would allow me to get a sticker in my dictation book. If I hadn’t practiced as I should have, then that meant no sticker for me! Believe it or not, the thought of not getting a sticker propelled me more to practice than the actual desire to improve my piano skills. The simplicity of a sticker system may work wonders for your child in the beginning. Before you know it, this simple trick will have left a new healthy habit in its wake!
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There you have it! So head on down to the dollar store and pick yourself up some stickers and a fun-looking calendar :) Check out the rest once the free e-book has been published!
As always, thanks for reading!
- Michael the Dentist
Dr. Michael Wenzel is a Dentist, Wedding Filmmaker and Aspiring YouTuber from Medicine Hat, Alberta. Michael loves technology and practices dentistry exclusively through surgical operating microscopes. He and his wife Natalia own a wedding photography and filmmaking company named Follow the Hope.