How to get kids to stop sucking their thumb

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My oldest is now 5 and a half. He still sucks his thumb. Avidly. Extensively. It’s actually gotten worse over the past 6 months. Which is saying something. He walks around the house with it plugged in. Only takes it out if he absolutely has to use that hand. Through a combination of long bouts of sickness, cold or inclement days home watching TV, March break, Christmas, and other holidays, the thumb sucking has worsened.

TL;DR

I don’t know how to stop it. I do know the internet has been wrong for us on most every point and suggestion. My son is strong willed. To the point of belligerence. He does very little unless he wants to or is forced to. And he doesn’t want to stop. No technique or treat or toy or reward or threat or reason or incentive has made any impact on his thumb sucking habit. My wife feels successful if she gets him to stop sucking for 20 minutes in reward for a chocolate (he never goes the full 20 without a pop-in, and always gets the chocolate). We tried the rewards. We tried the loving CBT. We tried making it a “tough” new year’s resolution. We tried a dash of shame and telling him he’s getting too old for it. We have not yet tried the plastic physical device(s) that make it difficult to actually put the thumb in the mouth. But it wouldn’t be easy to actually implement.

Which brings us to the story.

The story

After a combination of March break, a full week home sick, and a couple follow up weeks of more sickness, a handful of rainy, lazy, home-bound weekends watching TV and hanging out inside, Christmas holidays, and a scary bout of croup - our son is now sucking his thumb almost constantly.

He sucks it at night. He sucks it in the morning. He sucks it after school. I think he sucks it at school. He sucks it watching TV. He sucks it eating breakfast. Like literally as he eats. Between bites. For a break. He sucks it in the car. He sucks it when he’s tired. He sucks it when he’s not tired. He sucks it when he’s sick. He sucks it when he’s healthy. I just realized right now that the only time he doesn’t suck it, noticeably, is in the bath. For some reason he keeps his hands busy in the bath. He’s focused on playing with bath toys, pouring soap, fighting with his brother, splashing water if he’s splashed, whining, screaming, and other things, but he rarely if ever sucks his thumb. But that’s the only time. Except when he’s sleeping. Sort of. Doesn’t really count if you’re unconscious.

It’s become a part of his personality.

Related habits

What’s almost worse is he’s developed a new sucking-related habit: he uses the palm of his sucking hand to swish his hair into his eyes while he’s sucking, and the right hand to twirl a lock of hair down his forehead. The swish is a sideways sweeping motion, from right to left, then back left to right, so it forms a little point of hair between his eyes. We call it his rhino horn. And it gets crusty when he’s really working it as he’ll just pull it and swish it and style it and turn it and it gets greasy and food covered and gross.

It’s like an Emo teenager with the constant head flick thing that’s supposed get the hair that’s already too long out of his eyes, which doesn’t actually work, and just requires another flick, creating an unending cycle, which begets an entire high school persona. So my sweet darling beautiful handsome boy ends up getting a crusty little arrow of hair coming down his forehead. Any approach, any effort to move it out of his eyes is resisted and met by screaming - and of course - all the while still, sucking and swishing.

Most of all, worst of all, it’s formed another layer of attachment to thumb sucking that reinforces the whole habit.

From normal to fringe

He’s sucked his thumb since he was a baby. And it was cute and endearing and normal and part of being a baby. As he approached 2 or so, my wife started getting worried about it and tried to work on stopping the habit. She sucked her thumb as a kid, got buck teeth, had to wear braces, and is slightly scarred from it. I sucked my thumb too. But didn’t get buck teeth, didn’t get braces, and saw it in my son as a cute part of being a kid that he’d eventually grow out of. Until one day he hit 5 and was still doing it.

So while earlier on I felt more inclined to go easy on him, now I’m on board feeling like it’s time to stop. Which is proving much more difficult than it might seem.

Self soothing, emotional safety

Thumb sucking is a comfort and safety mechanism. He never used a soother. He used his thumb. And while you can grow out of a soother being in your mouth, your thumb stays attached to your hand forever. Which makes it extra hard to stop. It’s noticeably pushing his teeth forward. He gets sick so often it’s hard to say whether the thumb is contributing to that any MORE than just being in a petrie dish of kid germs all the day long. But I can’t imagine crawling on the floor in a public library then slapping your thumb in your mouth afterward can in any way avoid germs.

And added to that is the fact that it’s shoved in his mouth all the time. He has no shame about it, no sense of embarrassment, no concern his friends might say something, no worry about where he does it, when he does it, who’s there while he’s doing it, and there’s nothing at all that motivates him to stop. Or slow down. Or take a break. The crux of the whole thing, is that he has no interest in stopping. He sees our efforts to get him to stop as funny. And annoying. But certainly not serious or threatening.

Last night he was so tired he fell asleep by the second page of our first bedtime story. It was the second instance aside from the bath that I realized he wasnt’t sucking his thumb. Between the thumb itself and this new hair twirling habit, he has both of his hands in his face AT ALL TIMES. As I swept his hair out of his eyes I was sad but also sort of shocked that I could see his face and touch his hair without his usual anger and resistance.

He doesn’t want to stop. Which makes the whole effort that much harder. We, his parents, are telling him to do something which he doesn’t want to do. No amount of psychologising or goal setting, or motivation, or rewards, or stars or any of the other usual bullshit has worked.

Internet suggestions

Before you start listing all the great suggestions the Mom blogs and the Dad blogs and the Mayo clinic and Psychology Today and your sister’s best friends’ kids did to curb the habit, believe me when I tell you that — at least in our case — nothing has worked. Or at least nothing has worked for any longer than a few hours.

I could list them all and address them one by one, but they most often include: offering rewards, limiting TV, offering alternatives, keeping their hands busy, watching to see when and how they do it to offer other self-soothing options, and my favourite —- to “open a dialogue” about it (one of the gems of modern parenting) — do not work. We tried the bitter nail polish - for a day - which worked for 2-3 hours in the morning until he realized it didn’t taste so bad, and popped it back in. I said, “wait, doesn’t it taste gross” out of pure surpirse. He said, “not really. I can’t really taste it”.

We haven’t tried the full-on plastic T-guard device thing that I would never actually use, but he’d probably just find a way to remove it or just not let us put it on. It’s actually hard to force a 5 year old to do much of anything if they really don’t want to. And that’s not just slack modern gentle parenting.

”Successes”

We’ve had (short) periods of (mild) success. But by mild I mean “counting 5 instances where his thumb is out of his mouth without asking” which usually happens over a VERY short timespan, which we judge VERY generously, which means we look for any instance where his thumb is not in his mouth, be it by accident or because he had an itch or forgot or some other totally non-conscious, non-trying reason, which means all told it’s really a maximum of 3-4 minutes with his thumb not in his mout - all of which is rewarded with a treat, usually something sugary. Which means we’re really really, really reaching to make some positive reinforcement on not sucking his thumb.

Which hasn’t worked.

Tough love

You might say it’s time for some tough love. And again anyone who’s parented difficult, obstinate, rebellious, smart and cheeky children knows, tough love doesn’t always or really ever work. Tough love meaning a variety of things, but mostly just forcing a child to do something. We still haven’t followed through on a “There’s no TV until you stop” threat, or done any other other hard-stop-consequence that might actually work. Thus far we haven’t really curtailed treats, popsicles, chocolate, or ice cream, which are all his faves.

Why do we need him to stop?

And there is another question to ask which is why do we need to have him stop so badly. There’s the mouth palate, buck-teeth, might need braces thing. There’s the social and age appropriate element, i.e. he’s getting too old to suck his thumb. And there’s the sickness thing. But at a point his thumb is just in his mouth, all-the-time, and it gets annoying to see. And to hear. We don’t see his face any longer. Just a thumb. And he can’t talk properly while it’s embedded, so you have to intuit what he says. He gets angry when we say “get your thumb out of your mouth”, so about 50% of the time he’s growling and screaming and tantrumming. And it’s a bit comical how both his mother and I fluctuate between giving him a break on the thumb sucking, and being livid about it. Both of us feel we’re on him all the time, giving him negative reinforcement, disciplining etc, while his younger brother, who doesn’t suck his thumb, gets all kinds of oohs and aahs and positive attention. It’s like the thumb is a way for him to get attention in addition to self-soothing.

Sickness

He’s been sick so much over his life that we’ve attribute at least some of it — maybe too much of it — to sucking his thumb. I mean it stands to reason putting a germ ridden thumb in your mouth will deliver germs directly to the body. But I found a Mayo clinic article that instead talked about thumb sucking in an almost positive light. It said that longer-term, the early exposure to illness makes kids’ immune systems stronger and didn’t really offer any particular data on a high correlation between thumb sucking and illness. It said “some” parents worry about the effect it has on palate/teeth development. That was about it. So hey, suck away.

Conclusion?

So far we haven’t been able to stop it. Cold turkey I don’t think it’ll happen. At least not until for some reason he decides he wants to stop. Or some external factor, like friends, or a teacher, say or do something to motivate a change. So, do we wait it out? Do we keep on him, keep hammering away with the rewards concept that doesn’t work? Do we keep trying to use TV or other things as leverage and incentive to stop the habit (which also doesn’t seem to work)?

It’s a tricky place to be. As of now, we don’t have answers. He doesn’t want to stop. There is no shame or embarrassment about it. No reward is big or important enough for him to stop. It’s a subconscious habit now, so in ways he can’t actually stop willingly.

So, wait and see.