My Toddler Won't Brush Their Teeth: Six Things That Actually Work, Including a Pretend Call From a Friendly Officer

It is 7:40 in the evening. The bath is done, the pyjamas are on, and a small person with a closed mouth is shaking their head at a toothbrush as if it were a dentist's drill. You have asked nicely. You have asked less nicely. You have explained about sugar bugs, counted to three, and considered whether one skipped night really matters. (It does, a bit, and the dentist will ask.) If your toddler won't brush their teeth, you are in the single most common bedtime standoff there is, and the good news is that it usually responds to a change of approach rather than more of the same one.

Here are six approaches that parents report working, in rough order of how little effort they take. The fifth is a pretend phone call from a cartoon police officer, which sounds absurd until you watch a three-year-old open their mouth for a stranger they would never open it for you. It uses Good Behavior Police Call, a free iPhone app, and this post explains exactly what the call says so you can decide whether it suits your child.

1. Let them brush you first

Toddlers refuse brushing partly because it is something done to them. Hand over a second brush and let them do your teeth, badly, for thirty seconds, then take your turn. The job becomes a game with turns rather than a procedure, and a child who has just had control is much more willing to give it up for a minute.

2. Two minutes of the same song

Pick one song that is about two minutes long and play it every single time. The predictability does two things: the child knows exactly when brushing ends, and the song becomes the cue. Within a couple of weeks many children start walking to the bathroom when they hear the opening bars. Dentists generally recommend two minutes twice a day for children once the first teeth are through, which is why two minutes is the length to aim for.

3. Brush the toy's teeth

A bear with an opened mouth, a doll, a dinosaur: brush its teeth first with great seriousness and ask your child to check you did it properly. Then it is the child's turn, and the toy watches. This works especially well with two-year-olds, for whom imitation is the main way anything gets learned.

4. A mirror and a count

Stand them on a step in front of the mirror so they can see their own teeth, and count aloud as you brush each section: top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right, front, tongue. Counting makes the end visible, and watching themselves takes the edge off the strangeness of having a brush in their mouth. Older toddlers like being told which number comes next.

5. A pretend call from Officer Pat

Sometimes the fourth "teeth, please" simply does not land, and a request from someone new does. That is the whole idea behind the Brushing teeth call in Good Behavior Police Call. You pick an officer, Officer Pat (bright and warm) or Officer Sam (calm and steady), choose the Brushing teeth call, and the iPhone rings like a real incoming video or voice call. Your child answers, and a friendly animated officer from the Good Behavior Patrol talks to them with real pauses for answers, asks for one small thing (tonight, the teeth), explains why the job matters in toddler terms (the app's own phrase is that sugar bugs love skipped teeth), and promises to check in afterwards.

The details matter for a cautious parent, so here they are. There are no sirens, no threats and no talk of trouble; the officer asks for one small thing and is pleased when it happens. Every word of every call is shown on screen before you ring, so you read it first and there are no surprises. The app never places a real phone call; it shows a pretend one inside the app, and it works offline. Officer Pat and Officer Sam are made-up characters, not connected to any police force. And you can delay the ring by 10, 30 or 60 seconds so you have time to hand the phone over, with the screen waiting on a pretend lock screen until the call arrives.

The part that makes it a routine tool rather than a one-off trick is the praise call. Once the teeth are done, a Great day or Super helper call can ring the next evening with good news, so the officer is someone your child is happy to hear from, not only someone who asks things of them. Bedtime and Great day are free forever; a one-time purchase of US $4.99 unlocks the other eleven calls, including Brushing teeth, and removes the small ads from the menu screens (there are never ads during a call). Every call is fully voiced in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hindi, Japanese and Chinese, following your iPhone's language. The app is iPhone-only, rated 4+, and the developer collects no data.

If you are wondering whether a pretend police call is a good idea at all, we wrote about that honestly in is a pretend police call bad for kids?, and the bedtime post walks through the first call step by step.

6. Change what the brush is

A surprising number of refusals are about the brush, not the brushing: bristles that are too firm, a head that is too big, a toothpaste flavour the child dislikes. Try a soft small-headed brush, a mild or fruit-flavoured paste with the fluoride level your dentist recommends for their age, and let the child choose the brush colour. If your child gags or seems genuinely distressed rather than defiant, mention it to your dentist or health visitor; sensory sensitivity is common and there are gentler techniques for it.

When not to use the call

• Every night. The call works because it is novel. Use it on the hard nights and lean on the song and the turns on the easy ones, or it becomes background noise.
• As a threat. The call is written as a friendly request. If it is introduced as "the police will call if you don't", the gentle script cannot undo that framing. Introduce it as a fun call from a helper.
• With a child who is frightened of uniforms or phones ringing. Some children are. Read the script on screen first, watch their reaction to the praise call before the nudge calls, and stop if it is not landing.
• Instead of the brushing. The call gets the mouth open. You still do the two minutes, ideally with you brushing or finishing, since most children cannot brush effectively on their own until around seven or eight.

A routine that holds

Put the pieces together and a bedtime that used to stall at the toothbrush looks like this: bath, pyjamas, the child brushes your teeth for thirty seconds, the song starts, you brush theirs to the count of six sections, and on a bad night Officer Pat rings two minutes earlier to ask if they are ready. The next evening, Officer Sam calls with good news about yesterday. None of it is magic. All of it is the same job, made into something a toddler wants to say yes to.