Basically, my kid is a thumb sucker. Whew. I finally said it out loud.
One would think that a mom who allows her kid to gnaw on a pacifier at night until he was almost 4, wouldn't care too much about the sucking of thumbs. That person would be wrong. See, the reason I allowed/ promoted/ taped to the LM's mouth (not really, but close) that little green piece of plastic, was to avoid this very problem.
A binky means no finger, or thumb sucking. A binky can be taken away. Fingers, well, they are forever.
How do I know? Because, I too was a finger sucker. A hard core, until my age was in the double digits, no amount of teasing/money from my parents/ pepper nail polish, if I lived alone I would probably still do it into my thirties (yikes, I hope not) kind of finger sucker. Oh, the shame. I get it. I'm sympathetic to his need to suck. I also know how hard it is to stop. Poor baby boy, he looking at a long (and germy) road ahead.
In my ill-fated attempts to keep this from happening, I have bought every pacifier on the market to find just ONE that he won't spit out...he hates them all. I have swaddled him so tight, I was afraid he couldn't move... he breaks out in about five second and inserts left thumb directly in mouth. I have even called the pedi to see if there was anything else I could do... his response, it's actually genetic, blame the genes and let the kid suck away. It's gotten to the point where when he wakes at night to feed he'd rather suck his thumb, and after 20 minutes I have to go up and pry it out so he will actually remember that he is hungry.
Yep, he's got it bad.
The only thing left to do at this point is wave the white flag, buy enough non-toxic sanitizer for the next few years, and pray that he won't be walking down the aisle with that thing in his mouth (something I can guarantee you my parents though was a possibility.)
I'm pretty sure that in a few years I can't trade a skateboard for an actual thumb. Wait... can I? ;)
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2 comments :
Katy was a thumb sucker too. When she was 5 the dentist insisted that we make her stop. It was not fun, but we managed. She was actually sucking her thumb within seconds after birth. The doctor said babies who suck their thumbs often suck it while still in the womb. You've just got to go with it. There's nothing else you can do.
My oldest was a thumbsucker. He stopped cold turkey when his great aunt and uncle promised him a (battery powered) four wheeler. I would have bet a million dollars he wouldn't have been able to stop, but he did it.
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