When our little one was born, he was always spitting out his binky at night…and I was always rushing to his side to give it back to him. Night after night, this played out. It seems every ten minutes his binky would fall out and he would start crying; I would get up out of bed and place it back in his mouth for him. You can imagine how happy I was when at about three months old, he started sucking his thumb!! I was overjoyed, no more dropping his binky at night…no more screaming for mommy to retrieve it! Bliss!
Fast forward a “few” years and little man is still sucking his thumb at night when he is sleepy. I must admit I think it looks cute, but what it’s doing to his teeth is not cute, not at all! We have tried just about everything to get him to stop. We remind him not to put it in his mouth whenever we see him doing it. We have put yucky substances on his entire thumb, didn’t help; he’d either go into the bathroom and wash it off, (smart kid) or fall asleep and suck on it anyways! At his last dental appointment, our dentist mentioned a “Tongue Crib.” Say what?!
I had never, ever heard of such a thing! What the heck is a tongue crib? Here’s a pic for your viewing pleasure:
It looks like this. It is attached to his top teeth. He is not able to suck his thumb with it in. He’s tried, trust me! He has had it on for three days now, and it is already helping! The first night was really hard. He started crying and saying he needed to suck on his thumb, and it took a very long time for him to finally fall asleep. I have checked on him every night, all night long, and he has not had his thumb in his mouth at all while sleeping. Yay! I’m kinda wishing we’d put the tongue crib on earlier, but at least he’s got it on now.
He will probably have to wear it for about 6 months, though the doc said most kids usually stop sucking their thumb by the end of the first month. You need to make sure they totally break their thumb-sucking habit before removing it. I can remember a girl at my school that sucked her thumb well into the 5th grade! Kids would make fun of her and her teeth were really messed up as a result… not to mention her poor, flat, wrinkled thumb! I didn’t want my son to have to endure any of his classmates taunts, even though he only sucks his thumb at night and at home. His teeth would have continued to get worse and even if his friends never saw him suck his thumb, they’s see the damage it had caused.
His teeth might even straighten out! They aren’t that bad, but if they straighten back out, I’ll be one happy mama!
Does you little one suck his or her thumb?
