Toothbrushing in our house used to be a two-person wrestling event. I’d pin my daughter’s arms with one hand and jab at her molars with the other while she clamped her mouth shut like a tiny vault. It ended most nights with both of us upset, and once — I’m not proud — I cried. Over toothbrushing. The dentist had said “just make sure you get the back teeth” and I had taken that as a personal mission with military enforcement.

The breakthrough was embarrassingly dumb: I gave her a second toothbrush. She brushes her own teeth (badly, mostly chewing the bristles) while I brush mine next to her, and then I do a “mommy check” of the back teeth after. The whole power struggle evaporated the day she had her own job. She wasn’t resisting toothbrushing. She was resisting being held down and worked on like a patient.

The second fix was a song. Not a cute educational song. A terrible, made-up, two-minute song about the “sugar bugs” hiding behind her teeth that I sing in an operatic voice. It’s so bad it’s funny, and she laughs, and a laughing mouth is an open mouth. The dentist-approved timer app with the cartoon character? She watched it like television and never opened her mouth once.

Third: I stopped doing it when she was exhausted. We used to brush teeth at the very end of the bedtime routine, when she was overtired and had zero tolerance left for anything. Moving it fifteen minutes earlier — before the stories, when she still had some goodwill in the tank — cut the resistance in half. Obvious in hindsight. Everything is harder at 8:15pm.

What didn’t work: the flavored toothpaste bribe ladder. Strawberry, then bubblegum, then some cursed “watermelon” that tasted like soap — she hated all of them and used each new tube as evidence that toothbrushing was a scam. Plain mint kids’ toothpaste, tiny pea, done. Also didn’t work: the threat approach (“if you don’t brush, your teeth will fall out”), which bought me one terrified week and then a child who was scared of the dentist. Great trade.

Her checkup last month: no cavities, dentist said her teeth looked good, and she sat in the chair voluntarily. I nearly framed the report. The wrestling match is over, and honestly I miss the song a little. Okay, I do not miss it at all.