What is Thumb Sucking?
Thumb sucking is the placement of the thumb or finger at various depths into the mouth. This habit is usually not considered abnormal during the first 2 years of life. But if it extends beyond 4 years, then there is some psychological or habitual bearing to it. In both cases, the habit is considered to be harmful for the child.
What causes your child to start thumb sucking?
Babies have natural sucking or rooting reflexes. The mouth is a source of gratification for the infant. An infant associates sucking with pleasurable feelings like hunger, satiety and being held. Hence it is a normal comforting behaviour in young children. It helps self-soothe, feel secure and help them go to sleep. But if this habit persists as the child grows it calls for concern or visit Credence Dental for an expert’s advice.
It can be due to many reasons like inadequate breast-feeding, insecurity of child due to working parents, greater number of siblings, peer pressure, stress, difficulty in social adjustment. It is seen that the younger sibling, the more the frequency of thumb sucking. In the newborn the habit is due to hunger, in the first few weeks of life due to feeding problems, as a tooth during eruption of back teeth and at a later age due to emotional problems.
How will thumb sucking harm the child?
Because of thumb sucking, the child, when he puts his thumb in mouth, along with just placing it inside the mouth he tries to suck on it and applies a tremendous amount of force against his upper teeth. Due to this, his front teeth become flared and get pushed forward, and gaps start forming in between the teeth causing an unesthetic appearance. Also, because of this force, the back teeth get pushed inwards causing problems in bite which causes orthodontic problems at a later stage.
The effects of thumb sucking mainly depends on three factors – the duration, frequency and intensity with which the habit is performed. A rise in any of these factors is harmful for the teeth. Thumb sucking can also give rise to other oral habits like mouth breathing and tongue Thursting.
When should I intervene?
Before 4 years of age, the child’s level of understanding complicates cooperation with any of the intervention options. Also, the habit does not cause much harmful effects during this age. But try keeping the child busy in doing anything so that he does not engage in the habit. Care should be taken in that enough time is given to breast-feeding to infants to decrease their urge in sucking habits and also bottle fed infants should be held by their mother and enough time should be given to this process.
After 4 years of age, intervention is needed. Use psychological plays and a reward system for the child. Discuss the problem and its effect on the teeth. Keep a daily record of episodes of digit sucking and check on the child’s progress in stopping the habit. A decrease in the number of times the habit is practiced is evidence of progress and indicates that the child will likely discontinue the habit.
Do not get over anxious regarding the habit and punish the child. This can create greater tension and may even intensify the habit. You should disregard the habit and not mention it to the child.
Use positive reinforcement. A timed reward system may also help. For each day the child refrains from the habit for a set period of time, a star is placed on a calendar. In week 1, the child receives some reward or prize predetermined by the parent if the child refrains from thumb sucking for say, 10 minutes. With each day of success during this time period, the child is praised individually and also through positive comments to family friends and relatives.
In successive weeks, increasing the time challenge, the child refrains from sucking.
The prizes are progressively enhanced in value for the child. The goal is to help the child control the urge to suck. If the child continues to successfully control the habit for 3 months, the long-term chances of stopping the habit are good.
When you are at home, try spending ample amount of time with your child, so that he does not have a feeling of insecurity. After 6 years of age, the psychological approach becomes difficult to implement as the habit has become deeply ingrained in the child, as this the child who has tried to stop but cannot get it done. This requires the use of reminder therapy and dental habit-breaking appliances to stop the habit.
Reminder therapy employs the use of some distasteful or bitter tasting agents on the finger, tying of ace-bandage on the elbow, use of long-sleeve night-gown or mittens. There are various intraoral appliances which prevents the child to put his finger entirely into the mouth thereby robbing the pleasure of sucking.
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