In the mornings before school, we have been letting the kids brush their teeth at times independently. They need to learn at some point and it’s low stakes in the morning since their mouth isn’t full of candy and food from the day. I think the kids enjoy being independent and completing more and more of their morning routine.

One morning, I was running a bit behind and didn’t have their toothbrushes primed and ready with toothpaste. My 5 year old daughter decided to take matters into her own hand and open the toothpaste up. The toothpaste we have has a very difficult cap to remove and although they have tried unsuccessfully in the past to open it up, that morning she was successful. She was so successful that she ripped the cap completely off and broke it.

I only discovered it when I went to grab my 4 year old son’s toothbrush to put some toothpaste on it. I saw the broken cap and was actually impressed that she got it opened in the first place. It’s annoying that the cap broke off, but I wanted to tell her that I was proud of her for solving her own problem of wanting to brush her teeth. When I started to say how proud I was, she immediately apologized about the broken cap. I made sure to tell her that it was fine and the more important thing was that she solved her own problem.

I hope the more I encourage her about taking initiative and being a problem solver will give her confidence to continue doing that as she gets older. I know some times mistakes will be made (like the broken cap), but those are less important because I don’t want my kids to feel like they always need to wait around for someone to help them solve their problem. Once they build this trait up, I can then encourage them to be a bit more careful so that we don’t have more broken toothpaste caps in the future!