Parents’ words and stress levels can impact children’s brushing time. The child’s mood and sleep time also have consequences.
- Learning to brush your teeth can start at age three, with the help of an adult.
- It is recommended to brush your teeth at least twice a day for at least 3 minutes.
- The scientists acknowledge several limitations to their study, including the small sample size.
Brushing your teeth is necessary for oral health, but this task can be considered repetitive or boring, especially for the little ones. In psychology, it is considered a behavior of persistence, because of its frequency. However, certain factors can modify it, but research has studied them little. In Child Developmentan American research team is tackling this task and explaining how parents can influence the brushing of their children’s teeth.
How to analyze children’s toothbrushing?
The study involved 81 three-year-old children learning to brush their teeth. It took place over sixteen days, divided into two stages: from January to June 2019 and from March to May 2020. The families lived mainly in Pennsylvania in the United States, and had various socio-economic statuses. Parents provided toothbrushing videos throughout the study, capturing both the children’s level of persistence and the parents’ talk. The instructions were clear: recording had to start before the toothbrush was in their child’s mouth and stop when they took their child’s toothbrush back. If the children did not brush their teeth, the parents had to inform the researchers. In these videos, the researchers were able to observe the behavior of the parents throughout the brushing, in particular the compliments they gave to their children. They classified them into three categories: praise for the process, “good work”the praise of the person, “You are a good girl” or the other compliments, like “very good“. They also analyzed the other sentences of the parents, in particular the brushing instructions. Finally, the parents filled out questionnaires on their state of stress, the mood of their child, the length of their nights, etc.
Parents’ discourse has an impact on toothbrushing
The results showed that children’s perseverance fluctuates from day to day and is related to parents’ speech. Children brushed their teeth longer on days when their parents used more praise and less instruction. The compliments were mainly those related to the process and the category”others“. “Our work is the first to show that fluctuations in parental compliments are related to variations in children’s perseverance., analyzes Allyson Mackey, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of this study. (…) Surprisingly, parents were unable to accurately predict which variables shaped their own children’s tooth brushing.“According to her, this work could make it possible to identify specific factors that have an impact on the persistence of children in order to develop targeted interventions, and thus help them to perform these tasks regularly.
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