Breaking the Thumb Sucking Habit
Breaking the Thumb Sucking Habit
For a parent, one of the most annoying things to see your child doing is thumb sucking. However, as you may have noticed, getting a child to stop thumb sucking habit can be like pulling teeth. Usually, when they enjoy a routine so much, a child won’t budge from doing what they like. Your reasons for why they should stop will fall on death’s ears.
To avoid this problem from occurring in the future, you need to understand how to go about breaking the thumb sucking habit. Like every other kind of psychology you need to use to get a child to stop doing something, stopping thumb sucking means going the extra mile.
You’ll have to be pretty creative, but we’ve broken down some suggestions on what you can do to effectively stop thumb sucking and avoid it from getting any worse for your child in the future.
Use a Decoy
A great way to make this stop is to give your child something else to make them feel happy or soothe them. A stuffed animal toy, a toy they’ll enjoy playing with, something to cuddle at night, or even just a blanket.
This can be enough to give them something else to fixate on. Remember, thumb sucking occurs because a child might feel insecure – give them something to secure them, and they should be fine.
Use a Gambit
A great way to get your child to stop thumb sucking is to give them some kind of incentive for doing so. Like a good diplomat, children only stop doing something when they believe that it will be in their interests of the child to do so. For this reason, you can spend a lot of time trying to convince them to stop thumb sucking without any actual reasons why.
Give them a bribe – something they will get that they have been asking for. A new video game, or a new toy for example. If they stop thumb sucking for a week, they’ll get it – but if they return to thumb sucking, it gets taken off them. Simple and effective!
Buy a Glovey Huggey
Another great way to get your child to give up on thumb sucking, though, is to use a Glovey Huggey. These simple little solutions can be used to make sure that your child starts to appreciate their new fashion accessory. This works by giving them a glove to wear that they will love the look and feel of. However, crucially, it will cover up the thumb.
This makes it harder for the child to go back to old routines as they won’t want to remove the little glove from their hands. It’s a simple and effective way to get what you want and finally put an end to thumb sucking once and for all.
This is a challenging process, but you can make it much easier to deal with just by using a Glovey Huggey, or the above two suggestions instead.