A new study has found that parental praise goes a long way to encouraging children to brush their teeth. Motherhood is full of battles between a parent and a child. Moms can usually tell when to let the battles go, but there are ones that she has to be firm about. Chores and tasks that are vital to the mental and physical wellbeing of a child are essential, and a bit part of that is hygiene. Tasks like having a bath and brushing their teeth are things that need to be done every single day, but these can breed some of the biggest battles between parent and child.
According to Medical Xpress, a new study has shown that parental praise will work to encourage children to brush their teeth on a regular basis. This study was a collective effort by the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University and the Sante Fe Institute, and it can be read in full here.
They also found that parental praise will also work for other mundane tasks that children often don’t enjoy doing. Things like studying, exercising, and brushing their teeth are all improved if the parents just offer up a bit of praise.
The researchers wanted to see if there was a relationship between a child’s persistence on the task and parental praise. The study involved 3-year-old’s who were just learning to brush their teeth. They collected their data from January to June 2019 and March to May 2020. Parents were asked to submit videos of night teeth brushing over 16 days, and parents were asked to start recording before the toothbrush was in the child’s mouth and to stop when the child had removed the toothbrush. Researchers were looking at how the parent was speaking through the time, and the child’s behaviors while completing the task.
Parents were also asked to fill out surveys on their nightly stress levels, their child’s mood, and the amount of sleep their child got. The results were that a child’s persistence fluctuated on different days and it was related to how the parent was speaking to them on any given day. When parents used more praise and less instruction, the children brushed their teeth longer. When the parents spent most of the time telling their child what to do and how to do it, the children brushed their teeth for shorter periods of time. It looks like a simple “you’re doing a great job” goes a long way.
Sources: Medical Xpress, Society for Research in Child Development