Sensory stuff

Really just a rant as I don't suppose anyone can help. The battle continues with teeth brushing. My son is 15 and will do whatever he can to get out of doing it. I have tried so many different things to make it better for him but this morning, I took his phone and told him he wasn't getting it back until I watched him do his teeth. The result was him screaming and slapping himself around the face repeatedly before pulling my hair. I don't want his teeth to rot and fall out after his gums get bad. I am tired. I have tried everything including

*Tooth pastes and liquids, sooo many different types and brands!
Fruit flavour
Mint flavour
No flavour

*Tooth brushes
Firm, medium, soft
Nano ultra fine
Three sided
Electric
Sonic
Musical timer

*Reward stickers

Am I missing anything? Anything else we can try?

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OogieBoogie · F

Include a positive reward during brushing ?

Ie: can only watch favorite cartoon on ipad while brushing teeth🤷‍♀

Visual timers are good too. Means they can see the time reducing and it visually gives them an end point they can see coming .

Sometimes you need to sacrifice a bit of your ideals with this one : start off with a short time. Like a minute. (Maybe even less).
Keep that time until the struggle lessens and you're not fighting it.. (could take weeks🫤), then imcrease time by tiny increments of say...5 seconds? (Whatever you think you can get away with).

Yeah its not ideal to start off with....but youre aiming for an end goal. It might take weeks, months to get where hes got a decent routine.
But its all about making it less punishing which gives you a starting point to sensory tolerance .....and then very slowly increasing duration without going past sensory overload .

Its like building a sand castle grain by grain🤷‍♀

Sometimes you need to think outisde the circle.

It might be : give him a cup and a toothbrush while watching his favorite show in the lounge (take the behavior to a new environ).

No time limits.... just he's gotta give it a go. The more time's hes got that toothbrish in his mouth is a win. It builds tolerance to it.

Itll be painful on your part to keep reminding him with a cue....and if he refuses....no tv show then.

I dunno ...each kid is different.
You never know what's going to work.

We had to go back to basics with our son ... Git him started on a rubber baby's brush thing with no toothpaste on it ...it was more a 'mouthing' thing.

Then we added a bit of toothpaste a few weeks later.
It was just a slow process of getting him used to each sensory aspect of toothbrushing.

PatientlyWaiting25 · 46-50, F

@OogieBoogie the IPAD this doesn't work as he can't focus on more than one thing at a time. He would just stop and watch his show then scream and start to get aggressive if I try to push with the toothbrushing. We also had a visual timer. It was a big traffic light. My son threw it and broke it, so unfortunately it's no more. It wasn't that effective.