How to avoid thumb sucking habit in children?

A Thumb sucking is a natural instinct. When you observe your baby’s ultrasound, you see many babies sucking their thumbs in the womb. Sucking soothes sore gums during teething, and is often a baby's first way to calm them down. Because infants associate sucking with pleasure, they continue the habit throughout toddlerhood. This need to suck usually diminishes sometime during the first year. But some toddler retain thumb or finger sucking as a normal method of using their body parts for relaxation.

By the time your child is old enough that thumb sucking might harm her/his teeth, she/he should also be old enough to understand how it is harmful. Be sure your child has regular dental check-ups every six months to a year, and try these five tricks to keep her habit from becoming a problem in later life.

1.      Keep little thumbs busy.

Bored little thumbs often find its way into the mouth. The time-honoured way of breaking any annoying habit is "distract." As soon as you see the thumb going toward the mouth, quickly distract your child into hands on activity or insert a toy into both hands.

2.      Offer a sub.

Tell your child "When you feel like sucking your thumb, squeeze your thumb instead of sucking it." Or play the game of hide the thumb: "As soon as you feel like sucking your thumb, wrap your fingers around your thumb and hide it.”

3.      Track the trigger.

Try to identify which situations set off her thumb sucking. Is she/he tired, bored? Eliminate as many triggers as possible and quickly intervene with a play activity to ward off the thumb sucking.

4.      Play show and tell.

In front of a mirror, have your child run her index finger over the protruding upper teeth and put her fingertip in the gap between the upper and lower teeth while she bites. Put on a big smile and protrude your own upper teeth outward, saying something like: "You could develop Bugs Bunny teeth if your thumb keeps pulling on your upper teeth. But, if you don't suck your thumb so often and pull on them so hard, you'll have pretty teeth and a pretty smile." And then put on your pretty smile.

5.      Let the thumb rest at night.

The most severe cases of overbite occur in those who strongly suck their thumbs throughout the night. Discourage them from going to sleep when sucking her thumb, as she/he will tend to revert back to this comfortable sucking habit when she/he wakes up.

6.      Give child a teddy bear that's so big that have to wrap them hands around it.

7.      Put child to bed with her/his hands occupied with a book or toy.

8.      Set up sleep-inducing props.

Make a medley of you singing your child's favourite sleep inducing lullabies, and let it continuously play throughout the night. If your child is comfortable going to bed with this music, she/he is more likely to resettle with the music rather than her/his thumb when she/he wakes up.

Source:

Dr. Imtiaz Syed, M.B, B.S, MBA, CRA, PCQI, CPC

LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/imtiaz-syed/13/89/841

OpenDoor Team,  www.OpenDoor.cc

Redditch, Gloucestershire. UK.

Browse More Articles

Tweet

Written by Unknown

OpenDoor aims to provide Health Awareness. l OpenDoor is a platform used to Learn and Coach.