Thumb Sucking

I wrote this for our family blog when Zach was about 3 or 4 months old and was taking to his thumb. I was being told by all sorts of people to let or not let him suck his thumb so, being a big researcher, I took to the internet and started questioning my brilliant, experienced mom friends...

Between 75% and 95% of all infants suck their thumb, making thumb-sucking the most prevalent kind of nonnutritive oral activity in infants and young children. Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/thumb-sucking#ixzz1amUbSxgY

For my research, I observed my child, googled, and asked other mothers that I highly respect.

Pro- Thumb:
Freud actually thought of thumb sucking as an instinctual behavior. Many mothers I spoke to felt strongly about not refusing the child their thumb. They liked that their child had that soothing capability and didn’t want to take away something that provided comfort for their child.

There is conflicting information about whether you can avoid a thumb sucker at all. Some think you can train the child not to take the thumb and some feel like if they are a thumb sucker they are going to be a thumb sucker. Most resources say that thumb sucking doesn’t usually turn into an extreme habit that is so hard to break- those are the extreme cases. They also say that, anymore, people don’t worry about thumb sucking affecting orthodontia more than pacifier sucking (evidently they now have some sort of mouth guard that can be put in to discourage thumb sucking if it goes on too long).

I spoke with many new mothers that have, in the past, felt anti thumb but now really wish their child would suck their thumb so that they would sleep through the night, self-pacify better, not have to deal with a pacifier anymore.

Many mothers I spoke with said their children just grew out of thumb sucking on their own and if it was a problem as their children got older, they learned to hide it pretty well and only do it at bed time.


Anti-Thumb:
Other mothers had horror stories of knowing children (though never their own) that hurt their thumb from sucking on it so much. They usually felt like it was a dirty habit and would make their child sick more if they let them partake. The most common argument against it was that it is a much harder habit to break than the pacifier.

There are social implications of a child that sucks their thumb as they get older. Generally the rule of thumb (tee hee) is that over 4 years of age there start to be social stigmas and as permanent teeth might start growing in they could develop dental problems.


So where did we end up…? We allow it at nap and bed time but we do offer the paci in case he will take that. Matt is generally more against it than I am but we are both flexible on this topic as it does seem to make him so very happy. If he sucks his thumb otherwise if we are in the vicinity, we will gently pull it out of his mouth but we don’t make a big deal about it. We will see where it goes from here.Zach has taken to sucking his thumb. This seemed to come out of nowhere a couple weeks ago. Matt and I hadn’t really thought about our stance on this. I had heard both sides of the argument- later on you can take a pacifier away but not a thumb, vs. the thumb is always with them so you don’t have to worry about the pacifier falling out at night or falling on the ground etc. With no clear answer, I got to researching.