Motherhood FAIL of the Week: Brush Up

The Muffin Man already has seven teeth.  I'm not sure why he only has three on top, but so far we have seen neither hide nor hair of a fourth tooth along his upper gum line.  I'm hoping the tooth is just late to the party and not, in fact, missing all together, but I suppose only time will tell.  In the interim, he's currently rocking a lopsided tooth look, which I think kind of works for him.  According to our pediatrician we're supposed to be brushing his teeth on a nightly basis.  While this sounds like an excellent idea and one that I completely and totally support in theory, but I'm not sure that Dr. Spockman has ever attempted to wrestle a wiggling child, open up his mouth, and brush teeth smaller than pieces of candy corn.  Folks, this is no easy task, let me tell you.

I had every intention of following Dr. Spockman's recommendation.  I bought Noah a fancy baby toothbrush, and I attempted to establish a routine that involved brushing his teeth right before reading him a story and putting him to bed.  I imagined my son easily taking to this routine and, as a result, having a lifetime of beautifully clean teeth and no cavities.  Well, my friends, it only took one week of trying to pry open my stubborn kid's mouth, him biting my fingers (hard) before ripping the toothbrush out of my hands and flinging it across the bathroom before I simply gave up.  Honestly, at the end of the day I am just too damn tired to fight with my son over oral hygiene.  I rarely floss my own teeth, so who am I to be preaching the gospel of dental cleanliness when I don't even practice it myself?  Besides, these are his baby teeth, which are going to fall out whether I brush them or not.  Sure, I suppose it's entirely possible that not forcing my kiddo to brush his teeth could result in his baby teeth rotting away or something, but I don't feed him juice or candy, and he's got adult teeth waiting in the wings to negate my marginal parenting practices, so I figure I'm not doing too much harm.

I realize, of course, that's it's probably going to be even harder to teach a toddler to brush his teeth twice a day, but that's why I plan to purchase a case of bubble gum flavored toothpaste and pray that it does the trick.  Otherwise I'm just going to have to find some old person willing to scare the crap out of the kid by taking out his dentures.