Question
Do you have any simple suggestions to eliminate thumb sucking?
Answer
The book, "Helping the Thumb Sucking Child" by Rose Marie Van Norman, has many ideas for families to figure out if it is a good time to try to eliminate this habit. For example, if the family is getting ready to move, or if there is a new baby coming or there is a big change such as the child is getting ready to start kindergarten, these are not good times to start addressing the elminimation of the thumb sucking habit behavior. When you have these emotional kinds of events coming up in a child's life they may need the thumb during that period of time. So it is good to think about what kinds of things are happening and when it is a good time to start this process. But this book has really good suggestions in it and again it is very positive. It deals with not only the daytime habit but it gives the family suggestions for the nighttime habit which I think is probably the more difficult part of the habit to get rid of because once the kids go to sleep, unless Mom and Dad are going to be up all night with them, it is really difficult to work on that. One simple suggestion, from this book, is to take a long athletic sock and put the child's arm in the sock. The parents can pin the sock on the child's nightshirt. So, at night, if the child puts a thumb or finger in their mouth, what they're going to get is a sock in addition to a finger or thumb, and the child will not be able to suck on it very easily. That is one good way to help with the elimination of the evening habit.
It is not only the thumb that you need to consider but also look to see if the thumb sucking is paired with something else. The child may have a special blanket or a special stuffed animal. As soon as they get their hands on this blanket or stuffed animal the thumb goes in their mouth. We may need to get rid of that other item as well because again it is an associated thing. If you can't get rid of the other item then the thumb may continue as well.
This Ask the Expert was taken from the course entitled: Orofacial Myofunctional Disorders: The Basics for SLPs by Marsha Lee-White.
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Marsha Lee-White, MA, CCC-SLP is a speech-language pathologist at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, providing services at the Outpatient Mason satellite. She is a certified orofacial myologist through the International Association of Orofacial Myology, and a certified member of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). She has been providing clinical services to patients with orofacial myofunctional disorders/tongue thrust for approximately 20 years and has presented at the local and state level on this topic.
