Episode 227: Helping children cooperate with toothbrushing

In this episode, which is the second in my series of the foundations of Aware Parenting, I talk about helping children cooperate with toothbrushing. I share about my own journey with my teeth and mouth, and how I passed down some of that trauma to my children, and how that affected their willingness with toothbrushing. I talk about the three reasons why children may not be willing to cooperate with toothbrushing, including trauma related to their mouths, and what we can do to tend to each of those three reasons. I offer suggestions for how to respond to each of those three reasons, including attachment play suggestions. Here's the link for my Helping Your Child Cooperate with Toothbrushing Mini Course: If you want to learn more about attachment play, I highly recommend 'Attachment Play' by Aletha Solter, PhD, and my Attachment Play Course: You can find out more about my work at and my books at: You can also find me here:

You can listen to Episode 227: Helping children cooperate with toothbrushing online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Episode 227: Helping children cooperate with toothbrushing is an episode from The Aware Parenting Podcast by The Aware Parenting Podcast.

This episode is 00:39:56 long.

This episode was published on Mar 19, 2025.

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