Parents have a key role in helping their children to develop a proper oral hygiene routine in the first years of their life. Parents should lead and supervise their children’s tooth brushing approximately for the first 12 years, until motor and mental functions allow the child to routinely perform a proper tooth brushing technique alone. After brushing the teeth for their children for the first 2 years of life, parents will have to use playful motivation to encourage their children to brush their own teeth from about 3 years onward – the time when children want to brush their teeth alone. Each time the child has finished brushing, parents should re-brush the hard-to-clean areas. At the age of around 6 years, children are able to brush their teeth using a proper brushing technique. In this phase, parents have to continue supervising the regular brushing efforts of their children. The special anatomical situation of changing dentition makes it indispensable that parents still need to help their children in the daily tooth brushing task until eruption of the second molar (around the age of 12).