A Tale of Three (Four?) Thumb-Suckers

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Davene; and she sucked her thumb.

Her parents have told her that, when she was born, it already looked like she had been sucking her thumb in her mother's womb; and so it went, on through her early childhood, a regular habit for her.  Until the dentist said that thumb-sucking was messing up her teeth, and her parents said she had to stop, and she, a big girl of five years, did.  

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Once upon a time, there was a boy named David; and he sucked his thumb.

His parents were happy about that!  It was so much easier to have him self-soothe with his thumb than it had been a few years earlier to have his big brother be dependent on a pacifier that would invariably fall out of his mouth during the night, and sometimes fall out of the crib, and have to be retrieved by a bleary-eyed, barely-awake parent.  The inconvenience of pacifiers made the convenience of a thumb seem like the most wonderful blessing.  So David sucked his thumb...when he was two years old...when he was three years old...and even when he was four years old, all the way until HE DECIDED it was time to stop, helped along by the promise that he could CHEW GUM when he turned five years old and when he stopped sucking his thumb.  

His parents had faithfully asked David's dentist, at every appointment, whether the thumb-sucking was doing damage to his teeth; and the dentist always smiled and said no.  David wasn't sucking long enough or strongly enough to mess up his teeth, and there was no need to force him to stop yet.  It was always a relief to hear that.

After David so easily and calmly stopped sucking his thumb, his mother smiled a little as she remembered other people warning her that, yes, it was convenient for a child to suck his thumb, but just wait until the time came to break the habit.  Then it was horrible!  Not so for her, and for her dear little David.  She was so proud of him.

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Once upon a time, there was a boy named Tobin; and he sucked his thumb.

Just like they did when his big brother David started sucking his thumb, Tobin's parents rejoiced to see him begin to do so in infancy.  No lost pacifiers = more peace and sleep in the home.  Besides, Tobin was just so adorable with his little thumb in his sweet little mouth.

But then the first dentist appointment came along; and unlike with David, this time the dentist issued a caution to his parents:  Tobin is developing an overbite.  He needs to stop sucking his thumb.  You need to start helping him--slowly and gently--but progressing towards the goal of no more thumb-sucking.

Tobin's mother felt a little discouraged, but not too much.  After all, hadn't it been as easy as pie for David to give up sucking his thumb?  Surely it wouldn't be so bad with Tobin!

She was wrong.  It was bad.  

With David, he had come to the decision on his own, so it was easier to stick with it.  With Tobin, he was being compelled by other people to do something he didn't want to do--much harder.

With David, the enticement of freely chewing gum was a strong motivator.  With Tobin, although he thought it might be fun to chew gum, that factor was a much weaker force.

With David, the parents didn't have to intervene at all; they simply watched their son do all the work of breaking a habit.  With Tobin, the parents began to realize that they would have to be involved.  But how?

Wrapping a bandage around the thumb?  (The grandpa suggested that.)  Having Tobin wear a mitten?  (The mommy often did that.)  Using many verbal reminders?  (Yes, of course, but that didn't seem to be breaking the habit very quickly at all!)  

The parents were stumped.  So the mother did the best thing she could think of.  She wrote a blog post and asked her readers if they had any good ideas for how to break a child of the thumb-sucking habit.  ;-)

Meanwhile, she loved her beloved son Tobin and cherished every stage of his development, even the difficult stage of saying no to the thumb!

~ just a note about these pictures...Tobin only sucks his left thumb, so of course he only needs to wear a mitten on his left hand...but he often insists on a mitten for his right hand, too...these pictures show him one day when he had been so exhausted in the afternoon that he fell asleep on the couch...the right mitten, the useless one, is still on his hand...the left one?  whereabouts unknown...sigh

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I suppose this tale of thumb-suckers isn't yet complete.  After all, there's been no mention of the littlest man, Shav, and his experience with thumb-sucking.  To summarize it, Shav followed in the footsteps of David and Tobin and grew to love sucking his thumb, too.  Until the awful day he fell from a lap, landed hard on the kitchen floor, and apparently was in so much pain that he could find no solace in sucking his thumb (or sucking anything, for a while).  At the time, I lamented the fact that his thumb-sucking days were over; but now that I'm experiencing the challenge of helping Tobin break this habit, I'm suddenly grateful that we don't have to be fighting this particular battle with two of our boys!  "There's no great loss without some small gain," as my grandma would say; and I see with clarity now that Shav stopping his thumb-sucking was truly gain.

But now I wonder whether our little girl who's on the way will decide to suck her thumb, too.  Should we let her, if she seems so inclined?  Should we encourage it?  Which is really better:  pacifier or thumb?

Hmmm...something to ponder...  But even more pressing:  how do we get Tobin to stop sucking his thumb???