My daughter is an addict. She's addicted to sucking her thumb. Her teeth are starting to suffer from it and it is really, really starting to bother me. So, tell me. How did you get your kid to quit the thumb? What should we try?
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i've been thinking about this. will she suck her thumb if it has a band-aid on it? LO got a bad cut on his thumb and he didn't suck his thumb while he had the bandaid on. of course he started sucking his fingers, but that's another matter...and now that the bandaid is off he's gone back to sucking his thumb...okay not helpful here.
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@edelweiss: you just made me laugh out loud. Thank you. I'm pretty sure a bandaid would make her the grumpiest kid on the face of the earth.
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Her dentist told LO1 it was time to stop at her appointment last fall and somehow it worked.(She really likes her dentist because she is pretty, nice and wears sparkly earrings...haha) It will be a battle with LO 2.
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As an ex thumb sucker, there may not be anything you can do. She will stop when she's ready. I know it messes with teeth, but these days most kids' teeth aren't perfect and they get braces anyway.
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I was also a thumb sucker... I don't remember why I stopped, but it was nothing my parents did
I must've been like 6 at the time.
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I was a thumb sucker and my mom tried everything, including putting hot sauce on my thumb and fingers (hey, it was the '80's!). Bribery was what finally worked. I idolized the teenage girl who lived next door and my mom convinced her to offer to let me come to a sleepover, but only if I gave up sucking my thumb. I quit cold turkey and I got my sleepover! Lol
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I sucked mine until 8, at night time only at that point. I had no teeth troubles from it. For children I work with at school I have offered reminders for them if they want it and for one boy I put tape on his thumb. We had a conversation about it and decided we should try some strategies. They didn't really work. You could also use the bitter spray for pets if you want to get serious. I got some on my finger once and ate food after and it was pretty yucky.
Or you could implement some kind of reward system if you want to make it stop sooner than they're going to on their own.
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I have a friend who's dad put a cast on her hand/wrist so that she couldn't suck her thumb! It broke the habit!
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My friend offered her daughter money to stop and it worked. Haha.
My sister was a thumb sucker and got HFM and that stopped her.
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What about that bitter nail polish for nail biters?
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Just my own thoughts but I think a habit is harder to break the older the child is and the longer that it goes on...so we did make efforts to stop the thumb sucking for LO when she was close to 2.5. We used mittens first and that worked. She did struggle to fall asleep the first night but did just fine. The next night was much easier for her to fall asleep and by the third night she was ok. But when we took off the mittens she would suck her thumb in her sleep. We switched to bandaids on her thumbs and that worked great. We kept them on for a long time. I think a few months. It worked great for us I think I part bc she's a very compliant child and also bc she was still pretty young... so not sure how this method would work for an older child. But lots of luck!!!
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@mediagirl: I sucked my thumb until I was 8. We tried socks on my hands at night and chili pepper fingernail polish (brutal!). Eventually, I got an orthodontic appliance cemented in the roof of my mouth that left no room for my thumb. Some kids apparently just move their thumb between their teeth and their cheek then, but I quit because I also had the incentive of a baby doll from grandpa and getting my ears pierced on my birthday if I quit.
See link...I got the palatal crib. I know you are so far from needing this, but just FYI for the thread...
https://tguard.com/orthodontic-solutions-to-thumb-sucking-and-their-cost/ -
@mediagirl: Have you tried Mavala? A friend of ours used it and it worked in a couple days.
http://www.amazon.com/Mavala-Stop-Biting-Sucking-0-3-Fluid/dp/B0000YUXI0
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Have you tried a thumbsuckibg spot? Not like time out, but okay if you want to suck your thumb you have to do it in a chair in the most boring spot in the house.
We tried a drop of thieves on los thumb also and it helped to curtail it but I still felt bad about doing that.
I must've been like 6 at the time.
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