Why do some kids suck their fingers? Thumb Sucking Prevention

Why do some kids suck their fingers? What can you do to stop them?

For any parent, being unable to enact thumb sucking prevention can be tough work. Trying to get your child to stop this lifelong habit can be tough work, especially when they do so to quell nervousness. How can you get angry at your child when they just feel unsettled and nervous?

However, while preventing thumb sucking might make you feel like a tyrant, it’s absolutely necessary. A failure to do so is likely to see them keep on doing it to the point where it damages everything from dental alignment to become a personal problem.

Children can be quite mean, and children being tormented and insulted for their use of thumb sucking aides is quite common. While it’s not a nice thing to hear, thumb sucking prevention can easily make sure these problems are stopped at the source. To help you do that, here are some simple tips that can be used to stop thumb sucking from becoming an ever-worsening problem.

To start off with, finger sucking is an increasingly common emotion that children will undergo at a young age. Not only does this leave the children feeling more comfortable, but it’s a motion they grow used to from breastfeeding – a source of vital pleasure, comfort, and nutrition.

However, they need to keep that habit up past the age of breastfeeding and that can be tough. While you want to stop thumb sucking by the age of 5, it’s hard to do. Some people never go thumb sucking prevention and are still doing so in their adult years!

Enabling Thumb Sucking Prevention

• To avoid such issues as ribbing from schoolmates or suffering from anxiety, you need to help your child work through thumb sucking prevention. Don’t go down the route of putting a bitter source on their thumb to stop them from sucking it; negative reinforcement rarely works without a negative consequence.
• Instead, build up to it slowly. Praise them heavily when they don’t suck their thumb, and be pleasant when you do see them doing it. Work with them; educate them on the dental and social problems it can cause. Coax them with the idea of it being immature to still suck their thumbs; a bit of psychology can go a long way in prevention.
• Try and keep their attention levels high, too; a child often will begin thumb sucking through boredom as much as anything else. If you can sit with them and perhaps even visit a dentist to help add that authoritative slant to the message, you can be more likely to convince your child to give up the habit and become more open-minded to stopping.

Lastly, invest in a Glovey Huggey. This serves as both a timely distraction and an easy way to get your child to give up their need to keep sucking their thumb. Done right, this can be a fantastic solution to get them to stop sucking their thumb without the need for coercion, ploys, or games.