Believe it or not, some of my most popular posts in the past are those about our battle with thumb and finger sucking. Yes, both of my sets of twins (all four boys) sucked their fingers and/or thumbs. In fact, I taught them to do it! (insert gasp here!)
When they were tiny babies, it was much easier to teach them to get their hands to their faces than it was for me to get up and find their pacifiers in the middle of the night! So, even though I DID teach them to suck their thumbs/fingers, I did not want them to continue with the habit. With that said, I thought I would provide an update on our finger-sucking adventure!
It was May 12, 2010 when I posted about our final solution to stopping the finger sucking habit! I was desperate…and creative, but we have not turned back since! It has been over 2.5 years since I have had a thumb/finger sucker in our family! I guess it is safe to say that we have kicked the habit! LOL!! So, if you would like to follow our thumb-sucking journey, check out the posts below:
Thumb Guards 03.04.09 Explains how we got ourselves into this whole thumb sucking ordeal. Plus, I include details about our awesome success using Thumb Guards for our first set of twins.
Thumb Guard Update 03.22.09 Provides an update from our first attempts at the guards with the younger twins. It showcases our progress (with JI) and lack of progress (with TJ) and how we tried to remedy it.
Relapsed 03.29.09 The peer pressure from TJ’s lack of progress caused JI to relapse.
The Thumb Guards & Finger Guards are Back!! 03.26.10 Explains how we purchased additional guards to combat TJ’s love for his fingers!
No More Thumb Suckers! 05.12.10 We had to get creative, but we found a solution for TJ that TOTALLY worked!
Now that we officially have kicked the habit, I am hoping that our efforts may save us some money in orthodontist work in the future! A girl can hope, right?!?!? LOL!!
So, do you have any thumb/finger suckers? Do you have a success story of your little one(s) kicking the habit?
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Hi Angela,
Thanks for contacting me. Unfortunately, I am probably not the right person to give insight in this area! Did the person doing the screening provide any suggestions for you?
Mama Jenn…. I don’t have a comment for the thumb Guard however I do have a question about my 3 yr old and would like your input. I recently got him screened and was told that he was weak in the following areas: speech and language, cognitive, motor and social-emotional skills. What activities that you have done that you would suggestion I work on? Thanks for your feedback. I love what you are and have shared. God bless you!
We tried something similar to Mavala and it didn’t work for us either!
we used Mavala Stop for nail biting and thumb sucking, it had an horrible taste, but i couldn;t belive my eyes when during the night it had like now taste at all 🙁 cause the sucking continued…
so we used it during the day and in the night sleep he used to have like a tiny glove very fluffy and imposible to suck.
LOL!! It is always nice when they find a way to kick the habit all on their own!!!
My oldest sucked his two fingers when he was a baby, as a way to self soothe when momma’s milk wasn’t around. He cured himself of the habit at 6 months when he bit his fingers when his first set of teeth came in though, LOL.
WOW! I would have NEVER thought of hockey tape! Glad it worked for you!!! I was the opposite! My daughter used a pacifier and I kept her in a cradle beside my bed as a newborn. So…it was fairly easy for me to just reach over and find her pacifier in the dark. However, my twins were in a crib at the foot of our bed…not so easy to sit up and crawl to the end of the bed and hunt for pacifiers in the middle of the night! LOL!!
Just like you, I sort of encouraged my 3 girls to suck their thumbs/fingers. My two boys ahead of them sucked on soothers and I got so tired of trying to find that soother at night that I was quite happy NOT to have the soothers around for my girls. They were more natural thumb/finger suckers and didn’t need much encouragement. But, when it came time to get them to stop, it was more work. I looked into thumb guards but they were so expensive and not readily available here in Canada. I ended up using hockey tape! Super easy, super cheap and actually worked. I bought a package and wrapped their thumb or fingers with hockey tape and they WOULD NOT suck on it. We had to teach them not to take it off (which was not that easy but not impossible) but it actually worked very well. Their fingers/thumbs never got rashes and it was easy to replace if it got dirty. I had rolls of hockey tape everywhere! My youngest daughter never needed help stopping since she stopped all on her own by the time she turned 1. But my other two daughters were 3 & 4 before they were done. Now I tell others about it and it has worked for them, too!
Glad your son was able to stop easily! You know, your sock sounds a bit similar to the knit glove contraption that I ended up having to make for my son b/c I didn’t have enough ThumbGuards & FingerGuards! That is great that your daughter is honest about the thumb-sucking at night! Sounds like she is on-board with quitting! I think that is half the battle!!!
My son quit sucking his thumb at age 4 on his own. He heard from the dentist how he was messing up his teeth and just decided to quit. Before that, he had his thumb in his mouth all day long.
My daughter sucked her thumb only at night and I had hoped that she would be as easy, but it hasn’t been. She did not want to quit so we had to force the issue when she turned 6 as the dentist said we couldn’t wait any longer. She wears a sock on her hand (one of my husband’s so it covers her whole arm) every night. We used to safety pin it up by her shoulder but we can now trust her to keep it on. We have been doing this for almost 6 months now. I didn’t put it on her a couple of weeks ago, figuring she must be done, and she told me that when she woke up in the morning that her thumb was wet.
There’s just no way to know if they are doing it in their sleep so the sock has to stay on for now.
Glad the ThumbGuard worked for you! 😉
Thanks so much for your previous posts! The Thumb Guard worked for us too! We just finished up with it and for now, I still put a handy little glove on her at night until I’m sure we are done!