Thumb Sucking

Donna - posted on 11/22/2010

I have everyone beat. I have a teenager that still sucks his thumb and I think it is anxiety related. Nothing has worked to get him to quit.

Emma - posted on 11/19/2010

It is very wise to get ur son to stop asap because sucking his thumb can cause a curve to occur with his upper teeth. It turns out horibble and you can not fix it with braces...this happened to a friend of mine she is 22 now with a whole between her top and bottom teen the size of a quarter. the way you can stop him as nasty as it sound is to put some fiinger nail polish remover or something bitter like vinager on his thumb so when he goes to put it in his mouth it taste foul to him. it sounds horrible but it works.

Shannon - posted on 10/12/2009

My son sucked his thumb till he was 8. we tryed everything to get him to stop and nothing worked until the kids at school started teasing him about it. It may sound cruel but it did get him to stop and he was not psycologicaly damaged from it and he doesn't have and dental problems because of it. So I geuss what I'm trying to say is that you should gentle discourage it but don't get stressed out about it cause it will eventually work its self out.

Laurie - posted on 10/09/2009

I have a 27 month old daughter who sucked her thumb and twirled her hair (it went hand in hand) and just 3 weeks ago, she got like a paper cut on her thumb and we put a band-aid on it and it seemed to discourage her from sucking. We changed the band aid the next day and she still didn't attempt to suck her thumb. The following day, I used Mavala Stop, a nasty nail polish on her finger after taking the band aid off just in case and ever since then, for 3 weeks now, she has stopped sucking her thumb. I still can't believe it and hope she won't go back to it and just forgets about it.

Katrina - posted on 10/07/2009

i have a 8 yr old thats sucked her thumb for last 4 yrs after i had my 4th daughter apparently its a comfort thing in her case

Connie - posted on 10/07/2009

my daughter sucked her fingers. however i found that she did not like the feel of those fabric bandages in her mouth so i just kept a bandaid on it. within a couple of days you could see her think about it and decide against it. we changed the bandaid often and within a couple of days only put it on when she went to sleep. within a couple weeks it was gone and so was the finger sucking.

Darci - posted on 10/07/2009

My twin daughters sucked their thumbs for five years, I tried everything,nasty stuff on their thumbs,hot stuff.I tried everything.I found that you can discourage it,but they will quit when there ready.For my daughters it was a comfort thing.I also told them that big girls don't suck their thumbs and ask them if they wanted their teachers or friends to see them.They of course they didn't want that, so one day they just stopped.

Adrienne - posted on 10/07/2009

I never had a thumb sucker so no help on how to stop it but let me tell ya if they suck their thumb or not kids are gonna get the flu im going through that now out of my 4 kids 3 have had the flu bug this week

Carla - posted on 10/07/2009

You could try that nasty tasting stuff you can buy to stop people biting their nails. I think I'll have to go through this in a few years, my 4 month old is a thumb sucker.

Robyn - posted on 10/07/2009

Just to let you know my eldest daugther sucked her thumb up to about six and has perfectly straight teeth. I never sucked mine and had to have huge dental work as a teenager. I think the issue with teeth and jaw is more from your gene's than thumb sucking. If you make a fuss I believe then it will become a battle that is more of an issue than the thumb sucking.