December 6, 2009 12:30 AM
Thumb sucking - your advice, please
Hi Barbara,I have been reading your blog for about a year now and love it. You do a great job of summarizing all the important issues for mothers in one place.
Here is a question that I have conflicting thoughts about. My daughter is 4 1/2 getting close to 5yrs in Feb and she sucks her thumb.
Last year the dentist wanted me to try a sticker chart to get her to stop. I ignored his advice and have been trying to ignore the sucking and hope it will go away. My mom thinks it will but not until she is 8. However, her teeth and mouth are already showing signs from it. Although, she doesn't have her big teeth yet, it is quite a habit for her and she gets upset if she cannot suck her thumb when she wants too.
Her big times are when she is tired, in the car or between activities. I just don't want to get into a power struggle over this so have been avoiding saying much to her. Next week we are going to the dentist and I know he will bring it up again. I have seen a few items online such as a puppet to put over the thumb along with a sticker chart to help them.
What are your thoughts about this. Should I keep ignoring it or try to engage her in quitting. How would I keep this from turning into a power struggle. Some things I have read say that it is the interfering with the habit that resigns kids to keep sucking. Unfortunately I found on the internet an adult website where they are still sucking their thumbs and it is quite disturbing.
With 12 kids, I thought maybe you'd have some experience with this.
Thanks for your advice.
Take Care.
Melissa
This is not a phenomenon I have a lot of experience with. Anyone?
Posted in Mothering, Preschoolers | Permalink
Comments
I have had a few thumb suckers in my family. The worst case was my son, Nathan, who already had a visible overbite and the way he sucked his 2 fingers exacerbated the problem which resulted in a very serious overbite. Fortunately, we were able to correct with braces, but it was expensive! Another brother was one the same route but we taped his thumb to his fingers at night to help him remember not to suck his thumb. If her teeth and mouth are already showing signs of damage, you really need to do something to discourage it.
She is old enough to understand that if she doesn't stop, she may need braces, so show her some kids with braces etc. When she is at her times that she wants to suck her thumb, I would distract her with something, like a toy in the car to play with that requires both hands, or give her something healthy to eat like apple slices or carrot sticks. At bedtime I'd use a mitten or that puppet sock. Try not to get in a power struggle with her, just remind her that her teeth will get ruined if she doesn't learn to stop sucking her thumb and gently use your plan of distraction when she is prone to wanting to suck. It will take a while but she will eventually quit. She needs to unlearn a bad habit and learn new habits which is hard, but doable. Remind her that now whe is a big girl and not a baby and reward her when she chooses not to suck with a "big girl" kind of reward. Good luck!
Posted by: Julie | December 6, 2009 12:54 AM
Following the principle of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," I intervened in my son's thumb sucking when he was five.
He was starting to get teased, and he was losing his baby teeth. It was time, and I was his mom. He obviously would not do it on his own, maybe could not do it on his own.
Pick something that your daughter really, really wants.
My son was a soccer fanatic and really, really wanted super cook soccer cleats. Up until this point in his career, he had gotten used cleats from the coach's donation box.
"Don't suck your thumb for a week," I said, and I'll take you to the soccer store and let you pick out ANY CLEATS YOU WANT.
Now, some readers may routinely buy their kids all sorts of new stuff. We almost never did. This was a big deal. You must figure out what would be a big deal to your kid. Then, make your deal.
He messed up a couple of times. The week started over.
Soon, he went a whole week without me SEEING him suck his thumb. Sure, he probably did it at night in the dark. But that little bit did not get him teased or ruin his teeth. He developed the self control he needed and he got his cleats. He was one happy guy. The monkey was off his back.
Hope that helps.
Posted by: Marie | December 6, 2009 2:31 AM
Thumb sucking is self-soothing. One of my four children was a thumb sucker until she was about eight. As I recall I kindly let her know that she shouldn't have her fingers in her mouth in public saying it wasn't polite. I never tried a sticker chart for the thumb. On occassion I might give a sugar free lolly pop if we were on a long car ride. As she got to school age it was less of a problem because most children wouldn't suck their thumb in front of their friends. So it was only at home.
Also, if your child is an anxious child, (mine tends to be until this day), make sure their is plenty of exericise, soft music, not alot of TV and a warm bath at night. This too shall pass.
PS My daughters teeth moved a bit but she need braces anyhow so I don't think it had huge impact.
Posted by: Jane | December 6, 2009 4:57 AM
I was standing in line for cloth one day, and you know the long spread out line that can happen there... when the lady cutting and my neighbor in line began discussing this subject, they both had nearly adult children who still did this. I knew that I had had this habit far to long before I was able to break it. And amazingly everyone else in line began to talk about all the nearly grown and grown relatives they had that still did this. I paid my 8 year old $20. to stop plus years of going in at night and popping it out of her mouth when she was asleep. My advice is do not let this continue past age 2 it is a hard habit to break and I think a parent should really try hard to not let it develop ,I think it is just a habit of comfort, well your child could be trained to use something else for comfort that will not ruin her bite and cause humiliation later. Yes she will cry and be upset for awhile but that is part of parenting.
Posted by: karen | December 6, 2009 7:48 AM
Fwiw, I think you are right not to make this a power struggle.
My oldest 2 daughters are both thumb suckers. My oldest, at 7, still sneaks her thumb when going to sleep sometimes lol. My 5 sucks her thumb as a stim (she is Autistic) I have not and make no plans to try to deter her thumb sucking.
But, with my oldest, starting about about 4 or 5, we just began encouraging her to stop. Reminded her that only babies do that (not in a mean way) and encouraged her to be a big girl. Distraction helps. Gentle ''take your thumb out of your mouth Big Girl'' helped.
If you are serious about getting her to stop gently, be prepared for it to take awhile. But that's okay. Imho it's not worth fighting about.
also, consider getting a second opinion about the effect on her permanent teeth. I was told that thumb sucking wasn't a problem until 8yo, when it comes to permanent teeth.
Good luck!
Posted by: sandy | December 6, 2009 8:47 AM
I have four children who are now grown. Apparently very oral children. Now ages 21,23,25,27. Both my husband and I were thumb suckers so we produced two who were thumb suckers, one who sucked her fingers, one who preferred a pacifier.
The firstborn wanted to stop before he started school and wore socks on his hands to bed (with masking tape to prevent him from taking them off in his sleep - his choice) and he stopped fairly easily.
The finger sucker (child 3) stopped before school and to be honest, I don't even remember how or exactly when. I do remember that one time when she had injured her fingers, she switched for a few days to alternate fingers.
The pacifier girl went longer than I'd have chosen - at least at bedtime/naptime - but I figured she'd remember she also had thumbs and fingers if I pushed it too quickly. At age four, I'd warned her that somehow the pacifier was suddenly not going to taste good (thumb sucking stuff was going to be painted on : - ) and as she was (still is) a child of order, when we misplaced the last pacifier shortly before her fourth birthday, she had already been resigned to it and gave in easily.
Ah, but the second child. Adam was a dedicated thumb sucker. He liked to twirl his hair while sucking and as an infant, even got his finger entangled more than once. As a young boy, he had a short crew cut for THREE years to try to discourage the connection. He had a broken arm as a fourth grader with a cast preventing sucking his preferred thumb so he switched to the other thumb for the time the cast was on. He had an orthodontic device for two years and sucked anyway. He sucked through the paint on stuff ("I like it"), and through much nagging about it. There were days when I just had to give it a rest because I feared that "Take your thumb out" was the only thing I said to him throughout the day.
Just prior to his entering sixth grade, I gently told him that he may want to try extra hard to give it up before changing schools. He would be meeting new people. He was getting older and to be honest, people would see him differently as a thumb sucker so publicly.
Something clicked. He stopped overnight. Literally. I couldn't believe it but his (now longer) hair was not even twirled in the morning so I knew he wasn't even doing it at night.
He's now serving our country in the Air Force and no longer sucks his thumb.
I figured I'd share my experience from the other side of thumb sucking children to be an encouragement. It's at times aggravating, but I encourage your writer to not let it be the focus of every day. I regret how much I focused on it as a huge issue, to be honest. : - )
Posted by: Valerie | December 6, 2009 9:13 AM
My 2nd born was the big thumb sucker here. She got to the point of going back and forth between thumbs because of developing an infection in the cut her teeth made in the favored one. We tried many different things to get her to stop - the dr. prescribed the bad tasting stuff, we made offers of special items for going a certain amount of time without it, we tried mittens...it didn't matter, she kept it up no matter what. Finally, the trick, it turned out, was the birth of a baby brother when she was 7. We made a big production of it being the older children's job to help teach the baby about growing up and she announced that she would no longer suck her thumb and gave me her lovey (a satin pillowcase) to give to the baby. As many ideas as we mommies might try to fix a problem, sometimes we just have to wait for the thing that the child determines on his or her own to get it done. Now that she is a lovely, strong-minded 12 yo young woman, I can see that it was up to her all along and wouldn't have happened even if we'd gone to the point of having metal appliances attached to her teeth if she wasn't ready. Best wishes!
Posted by: Michelle | December 6, 2009 9:58 AM
My oldest son sucked his thumb habitually until just after he turned 5. He only did it when he was tired/while he was going to sleep, but it was an incredibly strong habit and he could not go to sleep without doing it. I'd not made much of a deal about it except for occasionally asking him to try to see if he could go to sleep without doing it, which he couldn't (wouldn't) do.
His top (baby) teeth were pushed way out of alignment in the spot where he preferred to suck his thumb. Being that he had already begun losing his bottom baby teeth, I knew the top ones would be coming out sometime soon and that he'd begin damaging his permanent teeth. So I decided to break him of the habit.
After his 5th birthday, I spent a couple of weeks explaining why he had to stop and how we were going to do it. He was reluctant but agreed to try. We began putting a long sock (one of mine) over his hand at bedtime. The first week was hard on all of us. He was like someone being detoxed from drugs...he had NO idea how to just lay in bed and fall asleep without putting his thumb in his mouth. He cried and whined each night for a little while.
I guess you would say we did engage in a power struggle, but I believe there are times in a child's life when it has to happen, and this was a time that we, his parents, needed to win the struggle, for his own good. We had to enforce his leaving the sock on. There were a couple of nights he'd sneak and take it off, and suck his thumb, which we'd find out when we went to check on him...and the next morning we'd give the appropriate discipline that we'd informed him would happen should he disobey the sock rule. We had to do that only a couple of times before he resigned himself to leaving the sock on. As I said, the thick of it took a week. After that, it was just a matter of reminding him to put on and leave on the sock--he had already broken the immediate need for thumb-sucking as a falling asleep tool, we just continued the sock to keep him from the intensely-ingrained habit of sticking his thumb in his mouth.
After a couple of weeks of smooth bedtime falling asleep, we started making him wear the sock for naptime, and thus ended the naptime thumb-sucking. (We chose to break it up this way to make it easier on him. I don't know if it was better than doing it all at once. I just know it worked well for us this way, and I felt better about doing it in "stages" for him.)
This approach worked for us. Only the first week was rough for either of us, and it was well worth it for the end result. After a month or so, our son cheerfully shared with us that just for fun one day, he put his thumb in his mouth, just to see if it still felt good. He said he was surprised to find that he didn't like how it felt; it felt wrong to him. I knew then (and so did he!) that he'd broken his life-long thumb-sucking habit! Also, within a couple of months of his stopping, his top teeth (again, still baby teeth) fell completely back into alignment, which was amazing to me (they'd looked SO bad before!). They stayed perfectly aligned until they both fell out——which actually happened within these last two weeks (he's about to turn 6 now, so nearly a year after his thumb-sucking rehab). I'm so relieved now that I don't have to worry that his permanent teeth will be damaged from his thumb sucking.
Anyway, we kept doing the sock thing for about 4 months, long after he'd broken the habit, but as a precautionary reinforcement. We let him stop once we knew he would not even have the unconscious urge to pop his thumb in his mouth.
Posted by: cam | December 6, 2009 1:55 PM
I was a thumb sucker until I was 10 almost 11. Ironically enough, it never ruined my teeth and I never needed braces because of it. I can say that it was self-soothing habit; it is a form of comfort. If you want them to stop, they are going to need to get that comfort in another way. That could be more time with you as the mother doing something rather ritualistic--having hot coco together or spending time together in some special way. You could put her in ballet or start her in another activity where she can physically channel energy, gain self-confidence, and feel more secure.
Personally, I hate bribes. Yes, they work, but I think it sends the wrong message--you are substituting "things" for what they want which is love, security, and high self-efficacy.
Posted by: anon | December 6, 2009 8:03 PM
I have no experience with this- neither I, nor my husband, nor our chidlren have sucked our thumbs. However, for those moms who might take the "sock on the hand at night" route, I want to caution you that kids who remove the sock at night might not be doing so intentionally, so keep that in mind when handing out discipline. When I was younger, I had to wear an orthodontic device at night. It didn't bother me, and I had no intention of removing it, but I would often awaken in the morning to find it on my dresser. I had taken it off at night (and walked it over to my dresser!) in spite of myself! So, I had to wear it during the day, which was not a big deal for me, either. Just be aware that the child who removes the sock (or whatever) at night might not mean to (unless you find them AWAKE with the sock off, of course). Maybe you could try safety-pinning it to their sleeve.
Posted by: Marisa | December 6, 2009 8:03 PM
My daughter was a finger-sucker. She did this up to about 5 1/2. She actually made herself quit. I had been talking with her about stopping, and mentioned the "yucky stuff" you could put on the fingers. On her own, she put some sandalwood oil on her fingers, and it tasted bad enough that it broke her of the habit. It took her about three or four times of doing it.
I think the biggest reason it worked is that it was (ostensibly) her idea. Funny how that goes, isn't it?
Posted by: teresa | December 6, 2009 8:23 PM
I come from a family of thumb-suckers and have one of my own. He likes to alternate between hands, and most of the time he doesn't actually suck on it, it is just soothing for him to hold it there (my mother tells me I did the same thing). His pediatrician (who was my husband's and brother-in-law's pediatrician as well) doesn't feel that there is anything wrong with thumb sucking in most cases. Most children outgrow it by the time they start school.
I figure if he doesn't outgrow it by the time he starts school, he'll stop in a hurry when other kids tease him for it. Please don't think me cruel, I'm only being realistic. He doesn't really have an attachment to any particular toy or blanket, so his thumb is it. He has shown a tendency to get rid of attachments when he feels like it, with his binkie and bottle he just decided one day not to use them any more and never touched them again.
As a sufferer of TMJ, I have discovered that bite disorders tend to be genetic. Same with crooked teeth. Because I have an undersized pallate, my teeth are crowded and crooked (a gift from my mother). I think for the most part that crooked teeth result from genetic tendencies rather than thumb sucking.
My advice would be to not fight that battle, let her do it on her own. It's just not worth it, IMO.
Posted by: Courageous Grace | December 6, 2009 10:37 PM
My first two were born thumb suckers (literally - we saw both of them sucking their thumbs in ultrasound images). Both of them were persistant with it. We started trying to break the habit when the older one was about 3, but made no progress. It got to the point that the older was 8 and the younger 5 and nothing had worked - explainations, bribes, the bad tasting thumb paint, peer pressure, everything we could think of. We finally resorted to dental appliances (ones that couldn't be taken out except by the dentist) that went across the roof of the mouth and made it painful for them to suck their thumbs. They both wore the applicance for about a year to be absolutely sure the habit was broken. Fortunately our youngest never had any desire to suck either a thumb or a pacifier.
Posted by: melissa | December 6, 2009 11:17 PM
I have an almost 4 1/2 old thumbsucker, and I really don't worry about it right now. He's already started to decrease it on his own and we do gentle reminders about thumbsucking is generally not a good thing to do at "big school" next year when he starts kindergarten so he should practice not doing it now.
His pediatric dentist said that at this point there is no need to really actively break the habit at this time--the structural damage to his mouth is done(ie moving up the roof of his mouth, although because of genetics he was doomed to braces anyway) and to not worry about it until he starts to lose the baby teeth and we want to prevent pulling out the adult teeth.
Posted by: Karen | December 7, 2009 9:34 AM
This may not be emotional, it could be physical. My little sister sucked her thumb until the age of 7. My mom was pretty lasseiz faire about the whole thing, but she did try to stop it.
Turned out, my sister's mouth was malformed in such a way that if she swallowed without anything in her mouth (thumb, food, etc.), a large amount of air went down as well, causing severe gastrointestinal pain.
Her thumbsucking stopped when that issue was solved by the orthodontist.
Posted by: Personal Failure | December 7, 2009 11:31 AM
I was a thumb sucker until the age of 7. I am the oldest of 7, stubborn, persistant and Im sure gave my mother a hard time. She tried everything trying to get me to stop. The only thing that worked for me was a retainer from the dentist that had 3 prong type things that came down from the roof of my mouth. Everytime I would stick my thumb in my mouth those would poke it! Hence it got me to stop sucking my thumb. For time to time, we Im in intense thought or anxious I notice I stick my thumb in my mouth and kind of gnaw on my thumb....(my husband usually catches me and tells me to cut it out) Its very rare but definately a comfort thing I believe! Good luck!
Posted by: Megan | December 7, 2009 2:39 PM
I don't have much to add to this information loaded thread of replies, but I have heard of people using a tensor-type bandage around kids elbows at night. It pops thumbs out as soon as the child is drowsy and makes returning the thumb to the mouth much more of a chore as little arms get tired of fighting the elastic bandage.
Posted by: kelly | December 8, 2009 3:44 PM
Have you tried Thumbuddy To Love? it is a great product for 3-6 years olds to help stop thumb sucking. It is a positive teaching tool that comes with book, thumb puppet and success chart. Kids love it and they can use it during times of boredom and they get that they are not supposed to suck. Dentists carry it or you can google it...Amazon carries Thumbuddy To Love as well...
Posted by: Andrea | December 8, 2009 4:41 PM
My newly 5-year-old son sucks his thumb, also only when he is tired or about to fall asleep. Because we homeschool, and I know the times when he needs rest, his thumb sucking is not known by others. We have never said anything to him about it. I believe he will stop when he no longer needs it. His older brother had pacifiers which I took away when he started biting holes in them. It was so sad to see him no longer able to so easily comfort himself when needed. None of my siblings or I sucked thumbs, but my husband did. His parents tried EVERYTHING to get him to stop, and he still kept secretly doing it at night. Finally, he was at a sleep-over and noticed none of the others were sucking their thumbs, and he just decided to sotop. I do know of one adult who still sucks her thumb. She had a traumatic childhood and is emotionally unstable, which explains the need to self-sooth this way. My personal thoughts are to just let the child stop when ready. Your daughter only sucks her thumb when she is tired; so it is not likely she will be seen doing it often out in public. It's also a great signal to you that she needs to rest. If thumb-sucking in public is an issue, you could suggest to her that she reserves it for private time. Hopefully she will notice her friends aren't doing it, and eventually stop on her own. I know that you don't want dental problems, but emotional stability is priceless. Teeth can be fixed with braces much more easily if it comes to that.
Posted by: Angela | December 10, 2009 3:05 PM
