Hard Habit To Break

The t-Guard is here!

That's right, we've resorted to a plastic thumb guard to stop Toots from sucking her thumb.  Apparently, with "constant and uninterrupted use of the device on both hands for four weeks, 95% of children will stop sucking their thumb".

Except I just read on the box today:

Only Two Requirements for Successful Treatment:
1. Child's desire to stop thumb sucking
2. Parent's commitment to follow simple instructions.

And so we fail at the first hurdle.  Because neither of my girls want to stop sucking their thumbs (and why would they?!).  They do, after all, have a thumb sucking mother that they see, and they have been sucking their thumbs since they were a few months old.  But I can really see a difference in both Toots' and Tiger's teeth and jaws this year.  It's not that their teeth are sticking out, and it's not that their jaws are malformed because if you look at them individually then they look perfectly normal, but when they clench their back teeth together, you can stick a whole finger up between the bite of the top and the bottom teeth, and that's surely not a good thing.  I think the Dentist explained that if the thumb is in the mouth a lot then the bottom jaw can't grow forward and therefore grows sideways, and we can kinda see that happening.

Anyway, we got two thumb guards in the pack, but Toots isn't going to resort to sucking her right thumb, so we have just put one on her.  And I think for her just having it on will be enough of a deterrent   They say you can still suck the thumb that it's on, it's just that the suction isn't there and therefore the satisfaction is lost, but Toots just seems to need the reminder, during the day at least.

So about an hour after we put the guard on Toots, Tiger wanted one on too.  But she is a different kettle of fish.  She'll already suck her other thumb if we put Stop'n Grow on the one she normally sucks, and if we put it on both then within half an hour she's sucked it off.  But she insisted so I put the guard on anyway, and right enough when she went to bed last night she just sucked her other thumb.  So if that continues then I'm happy to take it off her and leave it till she's a bit older then attach it to both thumbs.

And if this doesn't work for Toots, then so be it, I give up: she's just gonna be a lifer.

I do want to say though, I don't regret letting them suck their thumbs as kids.  Far from it.  I think the advantages still far outweigh the disadvantages, and if they never stop, well, they'll be the ones that have to live with it.