What Is It With Kids And Their Teeth?

One of the things I'm really persnickety about with my children is them looking after their teeth.
My teeth? They're not so great.
Mr Black's teeth are pretty awful.
The last thing I want is my children to have to join our woes of a not so fabulous smile, and I already feel like genetics may be against them.

On top of the brushing twice daily I talk to them about how food can affect the care of your teeth. That the reason that sugary foods are a sometimes food is because sugar likes to eat away at our teeth which causes them to rot and fall out if we are eating too much sugar or if we're not brushing properly.
Yeah, I'm one of those mum's that goes on and on about things.

One of the things I hadn't done was to take my children to the dentist for a check up.
Part laziness, part being told by a dentist to wait until they were in school, part "well I can see nothing wrong with their teeth and there are no complaints so we should be fine."
Bluey had his first check up Tuesday.
Bluey is my easy going child. Usually happy to go with the flow and fairly fine as long as you explain to him what's going on. The dentist? A piece of cake and he got the all clear and commended on his teeth brushing skills.

I took Greenie in with us, partly because I don't have a live in nanny to take my children as I please, and part because I wanted him to come along and see what happened so that when it came time for him to go for a check up he would be more calm.
Greenie is my uptight and shy child. Even watching his big brother and having his big brother assure him that it really was ok and didn't hurt at all he still doesn't want to go and it's not like getting a needle where you can pin them down, you need them to co-operate and open their mouth.
We were told to book him in and bring him in for a check up as soon as possible, but I'm not sure how they will get him to open his mouth. I'm fairly certain he's not going to want a bar of it.

When it comes to teeth brushing I have always encouraged my children to brush their own teeth from a young age. Telling them to count 30 strokes each side, top and bottom and of course the front. Once they've done that I've done a quick brush myself just to make sure all is clean, then we wipe our faces and we're done!
The trouble I've had with this is that my children usually rush their counting and really only do 10 strokes and I'm forever telling them to go back and 'count.to.thirty.' So when I received an email asking me if I would like to review a Philips Sonicare Toothbrush for Kids I fist pumped the air. You see this toothbrush is timed and it chimes to let your child know when to change sides as well as stopping after two minutes of brushing, the dentist recommended amount of time.
Also it comes with 3 different interchangeable panels so your child can choose how they want it to look, which, if your children are anything like mine, they must choose their toothbrush.
There are two different head sizes for the 4+ age group and the 7+ age group as well as two different power modes for their sensitive little teeth. It's also rechargeable in case you were lamenting over how many more batteries you would need to add to your grocery cart.

The Philips Sonicare for Kids is for ages 4+ so Greenie is still perfecting the manual scrub and counting down the months till his fourth birthday with envy.

What do you use in your house? The manual scrubber or the fancy electronic one?
Is this something you would try out?