This one’s for the parents of neurodivergent kids who battle the toothbrush like it’s a wild animal. PDA teeth brushing is one of those battles that nobody warns you about. Sensory sensitivities coupled with the demand of the brushing and having to do it twice a day is nothing short of a military operation!!
This time last year we were deep in burnout. My son wasn’t attending school. He wasn’t getting dressed. He wasn’t bathing. And he absolutely was not brushing his teeth. Fast forward a year and we are in a much better place. Tooth brushing in particular is now going very well (although I am not naïve enough to think we have to sorted it forever, I know this is just for now!) Bathing? Still hit and miss. But I’ve decided to pick my battles and not die on the hygiene hill.
Here’s how we’ve cracked teeth (for now).
He honestly doesn’t have to brush his teeth – by allowing him to decide to brush his teeth himself helps him to brush his teeth. Yes I really hope he will brush his teeth but if he doesn’t then he doesn’t and the more and longer I have done this (and not just with teeth brushing, with absolutely everything) the easier it is for him to be able to achieve these things.
And also I deliver the toothbrush with toothpaste on.
Yes. Deliver it. Like a waiter.
He can be in bed. He can be playing football in the kitchen. He can be halfway up the drive on his bike before school. Wherever he is, I appear like some sort of Tooth Fairy, toothpaste already applied, holding out the brush. He brushes. I stand there. I take it back.
“What a pathetic parent,” I can almost hear someone whisper. I don’t care. The phase of not tooth brushing was awful – and I know I am currently doing the right thing by him. He brushes his teeth and that is great.
He’s got quite a few big teeth now, but his molars are still baby ones. And a couple of weeks ago he started complaining about toothache. I tried to convince myself it was nothing. It was not nothing. When I looked, one of his back molars was half black. I knew it would need to come out.
The shame I felt was immense. The non-brushing phase. His restrictive diet which is heavily weighted towards custard. All of it swirled around in my head. But you work with what you have, not what you wish you had. So I rang the dentist. Getting him to the appointment was an Olympic event, but we got there. They confirmed it needed to come out.
Option A: Awake at the dentist.
Option B: Hospital, sedation.
He chose hospital.
Fair enough, honestly. And so we went home with banana-flavoured penicillin (which he took like an absolute champ), and we waited for the referral. It was classed as an emergency but the waiting list was huge. The antibiotics didn’t touch the pain. And there is nothing worse than toothache is there. For a week, every day between 11 and 12, the school rang…
“He’s asking for Calpol.”
So off I went. Daily Calpol deliveries to school. Part of me wondered if he just wanted me to come to school because suspiciously he didn’t ask for Calpol anywhere else except when he was at school. And you know what? I went anyway. Thankfully we got to half term and I was pleased because I didn’t want me going to school on a dinner time to become a habit.
And then… absolute plot twist. Out of nowhere, he decided he wanted it out at the dentist. Monday morning of half term he said, “Can you ring the dentist?”
We got a 3:30 appointment. (Why not 2:30? That would have been so funny). I knew I had to tread carefully. Hospital would make it a big event. Dentist felt like the lesser drama — but only if we could get through it. I needed to make sure we would get through it. So I dug deep for the day. He didn’t want to go out all day, so we stayed in. Which sounds relaxing, but if you know, you know. My son does not “chill.” He rotates activities like he’s on a game show.
Football. Uno. Darts. More football. Something else entirely.
I played and played and played, quietly watching the clock. At 3pm I said we needed to get ready, fully expecting him to back out. He didn’t. If anything, he was… determined. I was shocked…still am because this was very unlike him.
We got there. Still fine. I braced myself in the chair next to him. The dentist put numbing gel on. Then I saw her discreetly pull out a needle. She did her absolute best to hide it but I’m fairly sure he saw.
She injected.
He cried.
I nearly did.
But I rubbed his leg and held his hand and kept my face steady. Once the injection was done he said he felt fine, and I thought, “Right. Worst bit over.” But it was not over. Far from it. She started wiggling. And wiggling. And wiggling. At one point I thought it was out — but when she put the tool on the tray there was no tooth. I whispered…
“Is it out?”
“No, not yet.”
She opened a drawer and got a bigger tool. My God. Time slowed down. Another nurse came to hold his head still. I sat there thinking, please just get the bloody tooth out.
And then — finally — it was out. I have never seen a tooth like it. No wonder it wouldn’t budge.
When my son saw it he said…
“Is it a vampire tooth?”
And everybody laughed. He was a legend. Sitting there smiling with a rolled-up piece of bloody cotton wool in his mouth like he’d just won a medal. Afterwards he was buzzing.
“I feel so much better without it!” That night he ate more than I’ve seen him eat in ages and I couldn’t help wondering how long that tooth had been bothering him. A week later the socket had pretty much healed.
He looked at me and said:
“I can eat on that side now… which is good because the other side is starting to hurt me.”
I couldn’t go through it all again, I just couldn’t. I stared at him and said,
“Nooooooo… are you telling the tooth?” (yes I have been living with my husband too long – Why Is Everybody Obsessed With Jokes?)
We laughed. But I am not sure my son fully understood why.
And all that delivering Calpol?
All that playing games all day to keep him steady before the appointment?
All that standing there like a spare part holding a toothbrush while he’s halfway up the street on his bike?
That wasn’t pathetic parenting.
That was me working with what we had.
He brushes his teeth.
He got the tooth out.
He felt better.
And if I have to be Toothbrush Delivery Service for the rest of my life to avoid Tooth Extraction Part Two… so be it.
If teeth brushing and dentist visits feel like a daily battle in your house, you are not alone — and there is some brilliant support out there.
I’d really recommend listening to At Peace Parents — specifically Episode 151: Teeth Brushing, Dentists and Pathological Demand Avoidance. It’s a really helpful listen for anyone going through hygiene challenges with a PDA or neurodivergent child, and it might just make you feel a whole lot less alone in it all.
