After your kid has enjoyed playing with its own toothbrush it's time to give it the chance of using it (see Lifecycle your oral hygiene). The first step is purely about two factors: Timing and covering all areas of the teeth.
First, our timer application MyTeeth helps to internalize the time you should spend cleaning your teeth so the toothpaste can show it's effect.
Second you need to make sure that really every area of every tooth is equally taken care of. The best way is to let your kid mirror you or one of our characters in MyTeeth. Be patient with your kid, it should stay fun, be a game and if you start early you kid can have a whole year until it's perfects on brushing every tooth. Feel free to use circular brushing with MyTeeth from the beginning so your kid can try it if it wants to pick up the idea.
The order we recommend for brush the teeth is the pedagogic Inside-Chewing Surface-Outside rather then the classical Chewing Surface-Outside-Inside.
Now that your kid is brushing every tooth it's time to teach some technique.
First show your kid how to draw circles on the outside of the teeth (see Circular Brushing).
When you are happy with the result after a few days or weeks you can show it how to brush from red to white for the inside of it's teeth (see Red-To-White Brushing) or maybe your kid has already picked this up from one of our characters, these are brushing red to white for the inside when switching to circular brushing technique for the outside. Please note that your kid should hold his/her brush vertically for the middle teeth when brushing from the inside. Leaving some sprinkles on the mirror is normal and a good sign that you kid is doing everything right, also it's a lot of fun.
Once red to white is well established for the inner teeth your kid can try it on the outside as well.
Finally teach your kid to use the Bass technique (see Bass Technique), that adds a little sideways rocking before the Red-To-White technique. This is the best known technique and will stay with your kid all his/her life.
This whole learning process typically takes place over a year or more, as you kid has to develop the necessary motor skills and quite a bit more until it's cleaning so thorough you can stop brushing yourself afterwards.
The very last molar is the cavities favorit. It sneaks in during the 6th year without loosing a baby tooth and is often not noticed and therefore not brushed by parents. So keep your eyes peeled for him to come.
When you kid is ready to handle dental floss without hurting him/herself, you can give him/her a piece of dental floss to play with. Once it feels comfortable with it, help it to clean between the teeth. Just as with the tooth brush help your kid to go from tooth to tooth until every gap is cleaned. Alternatively you can start earlier with the dental floss before introducing the brushing technique, whatever helps it make more fun for the kid.
Get the floss in the gap between two teeth and then scrape the plaque way from the gum multiple times and then outof the gap. Do this for each tooth to the side of a gap, then move on to the next gap until you have cleaned between all teeth. Dont forget to clean behind the last tooth.
When your kid flosses well and brushes with the bass technique it's time to see if he/she can do so from now on, on his/her own. If you want you can use a plaque indicator liquid. Apply it after the cleaning and so your kid can see where it needs to take better care or if he/she has done a perfect job.
Keep in mind that until this point all your kid does is pre-brushing so the responsibility lies with you and your cleaning.