Why Stopping Thumb Sucking Is A Medical Priority!

Why Stopping Thumb Sucking Is A Medical Priority!

For many parents of young children, the sight of your little one sucking on their thumb is something that you will have gotten used to seeing. A common occurrence for most young children, this natural instinct that maintains from our comfortable early days in the womb can carry on into toddler and then child life.

To help your little one get out of that rut, though, we recommend taking a look at the reasons why stopping thumb sucking has to be stopped. Cute at first, this can become a problem for any child who is on the path to development. Why?

Put simply, young children tend to suck on their thumbs to help themselves stay comforted and content in life. However, after a period of time, this begins to become a bit of an issue. As we start to develop, your child will have their teeth start to come through – a thumb can become a source of obstruction for the teeth.

Quickly and dangerously, those teeth will begin to become a problem for many reasons. They can become pushed out of shape, moved out of space or stopped from coming through in the first place.

This is a big problem, and one of the first thing any parent looking into stopping thumb sucking should look to invest time reading about. When dental problems occur it can cause problems with growth or alignment issues in the mouth, causing issues that will affect your child for years to come.

From needing braces to solve the problem to ending up with an embarrassing over or under bite, a range of problems exist that can leave your child exasperated at the problem.

So, with this in mind, how can we go about stopping thumb sucking?

• Use positive reinforcement. Give your child the help that they need with the help of a positive encouragement when you see them avoiding sucking their thumb. The more they realize this is a good thing, the more likely they are to actually stick to it!

• Also, be sure to look at how they go about sucking their thumb – what makes them do that? Find out the cause and offer a solution. From feeling anxious to teething pains you can find out the reason why your child is sucking their thumb and put an end to it that way, which ends the problem once and for all.

• By the same token, you should look to talk to a dentist about encouraging your child in dental visits to stop. Your child might not listen to you, but they will listen to the dentist and make changes based on that.

• Best of all, turn to Glovey Huggey. These are effective and proven solutions for stopping your child from sucking on their thumb. By giving them a cool fashion accessory, they can stay well on track with avoiding sucking their thumb as they won’t want to lose their cool protective measure!

Whatever decision you take, though, stop putting thumb sucking down to something else. It’s a problem that has to be dealt with after the age of 4, and should be a priority for any parent who wants their child to avoid dental problems later in life.