The Toothbrush Lie

February 22, 2024

February is National Children's Dental Health Month, which means it's an excellent time to focus on an issue every parent must confront throughout their kids' childhood: Lying. I've asked many parents over the years if they remember the first lie their kids told, and the same lie comes up over and over: the answer to "Did you brush your teeth?"

Very young kids can't easily distinguish fact from fantasy, what is true from what they want to be true. It's easy for adults to forget that this awareness develops gradually from the toddler years and often doesn't have firm hold until after kindergarten. Catching young children in a lie can be especially awkward because they may not even really be aware that they did it.

What you ultimately want, of course, is kids who both tell the truth AND brush their teeth. So what to do? When my girls were young, my most successful strategy was to offer them an easy out, a re-do, rather than force them to admit they lied. "You know, memories can be blurry and you might be thinking of another time. Why don't you go check, and if there's any doubt, just brush them again for good measure?" Sometimes a simple "Want to rethink that? It's okay if you made a mistake!" worked wonders.

Over the long haul, kids tend to do what their parents do. So my best recommendation for Children's Dental Health Month is to model both scrupulous honesty and scrupulous teeth-brushing yourself. In case you need an immediate solution, though, I hunted down a list of kids' best tooth-brushing songs thoughtfully supplied by the American Dental Association. Grit your teeth and hum along!

—Deb