help us, please
Do you want to help save our marriage? Do you want to help salvage our relationship with our daughter? Do you want our family to stay in tact? Then help us. Please. I'm begging you. Help.
You see, our daughter, Sophia, sucks her thumb. Not just when she sleeps but at other times of the day as well. It truly does pacify and calm her. For so very long, her thumb has been quite convenient for us all. But now she must stop.
She must stop because her dentist wants her to stop. She must stop because both her parents sucked their thumbs much longer than should be allowed and stopping when your 9 or 10 is much harder to do. She must stop because her thumb is about to fall off.
Laura and I kinda disagree about how to go about getting her to stop. Sophia isn't doing well at all with the notion of stopping and even bribery doesn't seem to persuade her.
This is where you come in: How should we go forward? Any bright ideas out there? Remember, Sophia just turned four. I tried introducing a chart the other day in which she earns stickers that eventually earn her rewards but the idea was lost on her. Any ideas must take into account her age, of course. So no, Mom, I will not put hot sauce on my daughter's thumb!
The lines are open. We need your help but only if you want to save our marriage and our family. :)
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You see, our daughter, Sophia, sucks her thumb. Not just when she sleeps but at other times of the day as well. It truly does pacify and calm her. For so very long, her thumb has been quite convenient for us all. But now she must stop.
She must stop because her dentist wants her to stop. She must stop because both her parents sucked their thumbs much longer than should be allowed and stopping when your 9 or 10 is much harder to do. She must stop because her thumb is about to fall off.
Laura and I kinda disagree about how to go about getting her to stop. Sophia isn't doing well at all with the notion of stopping and even bribery doesn't seem to persuade her.
This is where you come in: How should we go forward? Any bright ideas out there? Remember, Sophia just turned four. I tried introducing a chart the other day in which she earns stickers that eventually earn her rewards but the idea was lost on her. Any ideas must take into account her age, of course. So no, Mom, I will not put hot sauce on my daughter's thumb!
The lines are open. We need your help but only if you want to save our marriage and our family. :)
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posted by jch at
1:19 PM
12 Comments:
Let me just qualify my comment with "I have no idea what I'm talking about" and "I foresee myself having the same issue with Abbie".
My biggest recommendation is do not punish her for sucking her thumb.
Remind yourself that this is her self-soother, her coping, her way to feel good and relaxed. There is no way she is going to get or care that this could affect her teeth, etc. And ultimately, it's great that she can have something to soothe her rather than relying on someone else's actions or acting out, etc.
What may work best is just trying to replace the behavior with a different one, without her being too aware of it. If she is aware of the switcheroo - she may become overly stubborn and resistant. Try to identify what exactly about the routine she is most hooked into. Is it the sucking feeling? Is it the preoccupation with her hands? Both? Maybe you find something that would keep her hands and mouth busy when she starts sucking her thumb...but that is also relaxing for her. Like blowing bubbles? Or if it's just her hands, maybe let her choose a swatch of fabric or something for her to keep in her pocket. Or teach her a "game"-how to hide her thumb inside her fist- maybe it's a bear cub going to sleep in a cave or keeping a bee inside the beehive - and she can squeeze her thumb creating that same physical tension. If she does that and then makes a move to put her thumb back in her mouth - "Oh no, the bear is too tired to take a bath. I'm going to send my bear cub back to his cave for bed"
Ooo - just realized making the sign "s" for Sophia could do it. You could tell her that when she sucks her thumb she wants some relaxing time - Sophia time - but you would know it faster/better if she held the s sign in her lap.
Or paint her fingernails? =)
It could just be that it's not going to stop until she's ready on her own...
Good luck! Let me know how things go - like I said I may be dealing with this in a few years.
Back in the day, one of my aunts used to suck her thumb. As she was about to start school, my grandmother sat her down and talked to her about it, and very gently made her aware that if she did that at school, the other kids would pick on her. She asked her whether she wanted help in stopping the habit, and my aunt said yes.
So...they did the hot sauce thing. The significant thing was that my aunt, at five or six years old or whatever, _wanted_ to quit and was willing to do the hot sauce method in order to quit. (_Hot_ sauce is probably too much, but maybe _medium_ would work?)
I used to bite my nails & my mom used to put some nasty tasting juice or sauce on them. I guess it worked - I don't chew them now. Embarrassment from peers will come soon enough if nothing else works!
My son declared he would quit when he turned four. So, the day after his 4th birthday, we wrapped his thumb in a bandaid and he quit within a couple of days. My daughter sucked her two middle fingers. She also quit at the age of four after wrapping her fingers with bandaids. It took her a little longer though. By the way, they are now 10 and 8 and they are both going to need braces.
Oh, the thumb suckers thumb may be wrinkled and wet and whithered and white as the snow. But the taste of the thumb is the sweetest taste yet......as only we thumb suckers know!
Shell Silverstein....more or less, as I remember it!
Good luck! No advice from me.
I sucked my fingers till I was 7 or so.
What I remember stopping me was I got a bee sting on one of my fingers and couldn't suck around the bandaid. My mom has some weird story that we also had pinworms and she told me over and over I had to stop or we would never get rid of the pinworms. I don't remember that part though.
I was also a thumbsucker. No idea how I quit (suspect there were social concerns involved). No braces as a result.
Mostly I just had to post because the verification word is "sycrk"--an excellent onomatopeia for the sound of a thumb being unwillingly snatched from one's mouth. ;)
I can relate to this post! Hannah turns 4 in June and has declared that she is going to stop sucking her thumb when she turns 4 (I'll believe it when I see it!).
I have been trying to figure out how we were going to reinforce it. Maybe I will try the band-aid idea.
Good luck with Sophia. We are a few months behind you!!
My name is Vicki, and I was a thumb-sucker.
I was 5 when I decided it was time for me to give up my thumb. I tried several things. I wrapped it in adhesive tape. That didn't work, so I slathered the tape with Vaseline. Better, but not enough. I sprinkled pepper on the Vaseline. That was enough for me.
1)Figure out how to make Sophia think it is her idea.
2) Let Sophia think up her own way.
3) Don't expect it to happen overnight, but don't be surprised if it does.
4) Give the kid a break! Her life has been not like that of most other kids her age, so she needs a little extra comforting. Let her have her thumb for a bit longer. If she needs braces, so what? They come in cool colors now. Or invisible.
5) Make absolutely certain that Sophia knows your love for her (or Laura) is not conditional on whether or not she stops. This should never be a crisis. A baby turning blue is a crisis. Thumb-sucking is not.
Don't you envy her - even a little? aren't there days when you would like to curl up on the couch with your blankie and your thumb?? Yeah, me, too.
Hi, Joe. My daughter who turned 4 in Nov is also a thumbsucker. Both her pediatrician and her pediatric dentist do not feel it is necessary to make her quit and most likely will quit on her own. The pediatric dentist put it this way when I told him how stressed I was about it... "look, our kids grow up and end up in therapy discussing some dysfunctional aspect of their childhood, right? Don't let it be this, okay? This is the way she soothes herself and gets through stressful times. What's the big deal? She'll outgrow it!"
Also, I have to tell you that I have gently broached the subject of quitting with her from time to time. Asking her if she'd like to or if she wanted some help with it, etc. She's always been very responsive to me, HOWEVER the thought of it must stress her out because the few times I've brought it up or we've tried it out, she has added hair twirling/pulling to her thumbsucking routine and ended up with a thinning patch of hair on one side of her head. So, my advice is to beware trying to force the quitting of a habit for she may replace it with a more stressful/damaging one. It has taken months for my daughter to regrow the hair she has lost through twirling/pulling. Fortunately, she has stopped(with the help of a sock sewed to her pj shirt). The hair twirl/pull habit is far more distressing for me than the thumbsucking/potential braces issue. I have backed off completely.
Good luck.
By the way, needing braces doesn't mean you sucked your thumb as kid. It just means your teeth are crooked, which can happen for any number of reasons. I'm fairly sure I was never a thumb-sucker, but I needed braces...not that I ever got them. Apparently because my parents were waiting for the dentist to tell them I needed braces, and he never did. (I'm not so sure that's his job!)
Of course, I could get them now, as an adult, but I'm too cheap.
(Ryan L, from back home in St Louis)
Just so you know, Blakely is now 6, and still sucks her finger. Mostly at home and when tired. Seeing how she favors her left finger is good, b/c in school she is left handed and uses that to write. Teachers say she doesn't do it at school. so maybe its just around us for attention.
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