If you’d rather read than watch, here’s a transcription of the video…

This week’s question comes from Asha. She writes:

“My daughter does not have a pacifier, but she sucks her thumb. She is 28 months. What can I do to get her to stop?”

I noticed this was a popular question in this week’s blog because I was talking about eliminating a pacifier in a recent video. And a lot of people were writing, “Well, I’m worried if I take away the pacifier, she’ll start to suck her thumb; or she’s already sucking her thumb, how do I get her to stop.”

I know I’m going to probably get a little bit of flack about this, but I don’t have a really big problem with a thumb sucker. I think that it is a self-soothing strategy. It’s attached so there’s no chance of losing it and it’s not even really that disruptive because it’s just such a. When a baby comes to a light stage of the cycle or an end of the cycle and there’s a bit of a brief wakeup, it’s just so automatic to sort of stick the thumb in and go right into another cycle.

I don’t find it causes the same sort of fragmentation of the nighttime sleep as soother use does. With a soother, you have to fully wake yourself up to find it and get it back into your mouth, and that’s a full wakeup, but the thumb is so instantaneous that it’s not really disruptive.

However, I know that it can become a habit and a lot of parents don’t want it to linger. And the good news is that you can do some behavior modifications when your child is of an appropriate age to end the thumb sucking. It’s not as if your child’s going to suck it forever. And I would wait until, if it’s faded on its own by the third birthday, great. If it hasn’t, then you would probably start putting some things in place so that you can get rid of it.

And I would do something like a trip to the dentist and maybe get the dentist to explain about how teeth grow and how you want to have good oral hygiene and how thumb sucking can cause some dental problems. For some children, that can be enough, just hearing it from a person that is not your parent and a person in an authoritative role can be enough. But for some it’s not going to matter at all. The thumb’s still going to go in there.

And I would do some daytime reminders. If you’ve got a child who’s sucking on fingers or thumbs, just sort of randomly throughout the day whenever they need comfort you can start redirecting them. So instead of using the thumb perhaps they pick up a toy and give that a hug or you can distract them right into another activity to curb it. You can simply say no you are not allowed to suck your fingers or thumb during the day when you are awake. You need to save that for bed.
And then when you are ready to end it I would setup a reward chart. So you know if you don’t use your thumb tonight in the morning you can have a reward of some kind. Remember, rewards need to be fairly instant especially in this age group. So don’t make your child wait all day for the reward. If he comes in and says I didn’t suck my thumb, you hand him that reward; it’s got to be instant.

Another great trick that I’ve discovered is if you buy some little finger puppets. You can buy puppets that you have to put your whole hand inside and that could be a great reminder because it is such an innate, automatic response to stick your thumb in your mouth that if you have finger puppets on, it’s just a reminder…

“Oh right, I’m not supposed to do that… Oh right I’m trying to stop that.”

And again, habits can be broken over time and it’s going to take a few nights, maybe even a week or two before that habit is gone, but it can be done. It’s not impossible. So at 28 months, I wouldn’t worry too much right now. I would definitely discourage it from any daytime use and just tell her that that is something special she can have just at bedtime or at nap. And give it another, say, eight months, and then you can start revisiting the idea of getting her off this thumb sucking.

So I hope that helps. Thanks for your question. Sleep well.