We started cleaning Jamie's teeth as soon as the first ones appeared. At the time, he couldn't stand unaided - and even now, although he stands well, he's not tall enough to lean over the bathroom sink even with a stepstool. We don't have a bathroom counter he can sit on, and there's no way I can stand and hold him.
This is our solution. The chair is a cheap plastic booster seat designed to be strapped to a dining chair - the sort of thing you might take on holiday or to grandparents' houses when a full-size high chair isn't available and/or would take up too much room. It's stable enough to be safe sitting on the floor, has enough of a harness that the child would at least take a few moments to escape (call no thing childproof), and is lightweight enough that it can be very easily picked up and moved.
I put a muslin cloth around Jamie's neck and then prepare both our toothbrushes, and we clean our teeth together, me kneeling or sitting on the bathroom floor facing him so that he can copy. After a while we swap hands - I hold his toothbrush in his mouth and give his teeth a last quick once-over, and he holds my toothbrush in my mouth and moves it around.
Then I rinse the toothbrushes and we use them to brush away the excess toothpaste. We do this a couple of times. Jamie mostly just dribbles it out onto the cloth - I'm not sure he's old enough to understand swilling and spitting a mouthful of water into the sink.
I think the thing I like most about this is that it gives me a chance to clean my own teeth!
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