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I Use This Tracker To Actually Get My Kids To Brush Their Teeth Every Day
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First, a confession: When my parents sent me off to brush my teeth at 7 or 8 years old, I would sometimes run the water in the sink, rub a dab of toothpaste on my front teeth, and stall long enough to make it seem like I had brushed. Only in a child’s mind did it make sense to cheat at brushing with an elaborate ruse that took just as time and energy as actually brushing.
My sneaky past primed me to see the signs of fake brushing in my own kids, but ramping up reminders and demonstrations after every dentist visit only had a short-term impact. I found a potential solution through an Instagram ad for Truthbrush. Truthbrush is a tracker you attach to your child’s toothbrush to measure when, how long, and how thoroughly your child is brushing.
Why you need to keep an eye on brushing routines
In 2017, a UK study found that nearly half of kids lie about brushing their teeth. So it wasn’t just me?
Dentists recommend you assist with or monitor brushing until a child is at least 7 years old. After that, you might consider it a hands-off personal hygiene skill, but you can never really turn your back on the kids for too long, right?
We know how important dental health is—my kids have never missed a dentist appointment or even had a cavity. But I also don’t want them to get the idea that their lax brushing habits will never have negative consequences. Before Truthbrush, my extra monitoring and nagging didn’t really make brushing more appealing. As soon as I thought they were building good habits, I relaxed my control, and they returned to their slack ways.
What Truthbrush does
The Truthbrush device loops securely around a manual or electric toothbrush handle. Like a Fitbit for oral care, it tracks brushing events, duration, and coverage. It maps your brushing strokes, highlights what you’re doing right, and shows areas where you can improve.
The Truthbrush app makes it easy to see your brushing stats, including frequency, duration, and coverage. You can set reminders, create goals, and earn rewards. So I wouldn’t have to worry about my phone picking up the tracker signal, I got the optional Hub ($14.99), which connects to our home wifi.
Using Truthbrush in practice
At bedtime, I hug and kiss my kids, look directly into their little eyes, and say, “Go upstairs, brush your teeth, and go to sleep.” On a good night, my phone buzzes to let me know each kid brushed, for how long, and how well. We all rest peacefully with clean teeth. On a normal night, they each come down three to five more times to show me LEGOs or report an anxious thought, and I send them back with reassurances and a reminder that they still need to brush. On a bad night, I send them upstairs to bed, never get a brushing notification, and fall asleep without following up. It’s not a perfect system.
Now that we have been using Truthbrush for almost three months, though, the biggest change has been in my awareness. The kids are still not always brushing twice daily, but now I have data instead of uncertainty and suspicion.
Using the data to motivate and improve
I recently went over the Truthbrush data with my oldest, discussing how many times she skipped brushing, that her average brushing time was lower than ideal, etc.
“Does seeing this motivate you to try to improve your stats?” I asked her.
“No,” she said.
“Would going to the dentist and getting cavities motivate you?” I asked. Scare tactics!
“No,” she said with an eye roll.
“How can we use this information to motivate better brushing habits?” I asked.
“Let me see [younger sister’s] stats.”
Bingo! They may not be motivated by oral wellness or by impressing me, but they are motivated by competing with each other. I will definitely use this to my advantage.
Truthbrush Pros and Cons
Pros
The data is priceless when you are not the type of parent to watch and analyze every brushing session.
It's pretty easy to set up and create profiles in the app.
You can tap into siblings’ gamer competitiveness to motivate them toward better brushing.
Cons
The cost: It starts at $25 for one Classic tracker. You can spend more for a Pro tracker or for skins to make your tracker cuter. The classic’s battery is meant to last one year, so you will be repurchasing if your kid’s brushing isn’t totally transformed by then. There’s no subscription fee for the app, though.
I still have to follow through with reminders. The Truthbrush device is not their actual mom.
I suspect that waggling the brush is recorded as a brushing event sometimes, based on alerts I’ve gotten during cleaning or travel. But don’t tell my kids that, or they will be running water and waving their brushes around to trick me.
Based on my experience, I recommend Truthbrush for parents of kids who are past the age of needing you to brush for them, but still need a little surveillance to keep them focused and honest.
