Thumb/Finger Sucking

Hi S.,

My son is 3 1/2 and sucks his thumb mainly when he is tired or relaxing at home but I did ask my pediatrician about how and when I should get him to quit and he told me to have some sort of signal that is just between you and your child (like tapping your nose or pulling your ear) and when your child catches this signal they are to take their fingers/thumb out of their mouth. You obviously have to tell the child this is your special signal ahead of time. I have not tried this and I am not sure if it would actually work but my pediatrician said that basically kids do not even notice that they are doing it because it is such a habit. He said you just have to be consistent and it should work. I am not sure about it but he has been right about so many other things that sounded just a little too easy to be true so I will give it a try. Just thought I would pass along the info. Good luck.

My daughter sucks her thumb, too. She turned 3 in December. I feel comfortable with my pediatrician's advice that she will stop when she's ready. It appears to give her comfort, so it's ok with me. I notice she does it when she's feeling stressed, upset, or tired. Or gets in trouble! I think he suggested that we might try to have her stop by the time she turned 5 as it could at that point start affecting her teeth. I wouldn't know what to suggest about your older daughter because I have no experience with that age yet. Let me know if you have any success as I expect I'll be dealing with the problem when my daughter get older, too!

S.,
My friend told her daughter that if she stopped bitting her nails that she would get a dog....she did not think that she would and she did and guess what they had to get her a dog.

My daughter is bitting her nails now, and I told her that we will get some FISH if she stops...I really want her to stop and as much as I dont want fish, I am willing to get a couple for her nails to look pretty...so far so good....but I must admit that fish is much easier than a dog.

My mom got my brother and I both to stop when we were 3 1/2 by telling us we could have one thing we really wanted but on the box it said "not for thumbsuckers". So we really had to quit otherwise we couldn't have the reward, and if we did suck our thumbs it would have to be returned. I got a canopy bed and my brother got a big expensive toy. Since we couldn't read, we didn't know any better that the boxes didn't say that.

There are a couple of things that you can try.

Try putting either tobasco sauce (hot) or lemon concentrate (sour) on their fingers. They are potent enough to make the kids not want them, but it won't hurt them.

Another thing you can try is to "buy" their fingers. My son would not quit sucking his thumb, (and he likes sour and hot stuff, so I offered him $5.00 for his fingers. If I "bought" them, that meant that they were mine, and he couldn't suck on them wanymore. It cost me $10.00, but it worked.