hey you! autistic adult who loves drinking soda but hates brushing their teeth! hear me out, i'm trying to help you in the long run
please try to drink water alongside your soda
i'll also include some tips on taking care of your teeth in this post, but please please please try to rinse your mouth with water after each sip somehow. i do this by drinking soda and water back and forth
not everyone's going to try this or like it, but that's okay! i just want you to know that it's an option for helping to protect your teeth from the soda
Tips for Consistent Teeth-Brushing
- Something Is Better Than Nothing: if you can't brush your teeth (we've all been there), try some other mouth-cleaning steps that you Can manage
rinse your mouth with salt water or mouthwash (i use a flouride mouthwash myself), "brush" your teeth with your finger, brush without toothpaste, whatever
just try to do Something for your teeth if you can manage it. anything helps! and it might get you used to dedicating a certain amount of time to taking care of your teeth each day, which may make it easier to brush in the future
- Try An Electric Toothbrush With A Timer: i hate brushing my teeth manually because i struggle with time blindness; i can't tell how long i'm supposed to brush for and it feels like an eternity when i have to track that shit myself
so i don't! my electric toothbrush has a 2 minute timer that's broken up into four 30 second segments. it pulses to let me know when each 30 second period is about to end too!
so i spend 30 seconds on each "quadrant" of my teeth. 30 secs for the top row (front), top row (back), bottom row (front), bottom row (back)
it helps a lot and mine was like $20 at Target (it's a privilege to be able to buy one, i know that, but it was worth it for me so i recommend trying)
- Get The Softest Bristles Possible: the stiffer the bristles, the ouchier the toothbrush is for me to use (and the more damage they risk posing to your enamel, apparently)
soft bristles get the work done without much (if any) pain
- Try Flavored Toothpaste: mint sucks for many of us!
i like mint, but even i can't handle most minty toothpastes. i use exclusively Sensodyne because of this. on top of the sensitive tooth benefits, i get a more subtle mint flavor than something like Colgate (which kinda burns me ngl)
but there's also other flavors too! especially if you look at kid's toothpaste
try a few different flavors and see if there's one that you like!
- Motivate Yourself with Something:
this is gonna sound kinda gross to some of you but i gotta give y'all the full disclosure here: i did not start trying to brush my teeth consistently until early high school. my parents never taught me how and it never became a habit as a kid. you know why i decided to start then?
because i met a girl. and i thought she wouldn't want to kiss me if she knew i didn't brush my teeth
it sounds silly but i wanted her to enjoy kissing me, so i wanted my breath to smell nice and my mouth to have a relative lack of bad bacteria, so i tried really hard to form a teeth-brushing habit
closing thoughts
it took me the better part of a decade, many cavities, and three root canals to actually create something that resembles a habit of brushing my teeth twice daily though. progress is not linear and i'm not ashamed to speak of my journey and struggles
and that's why i share this advice with y'all! again, i'm not a medical professional and i'm only sharing what has worked for me so far in case someone else could use it
you don't have to try any of this if you don't want to, but i hope it gives you some ideas!
you got this :D