How I stopped my daughter from sucking her thumb

The day we stopped swaddling my daughter, was the day she started sucking her thumb. Of course my Mom warned me against allowing her to do this, but there were days that it would be the only thing that would calm her down (and she was cute). As any new parent I did my online research to see if there was anything wrong in thumb sucking and found that most doctors said it was OK. So I left it at that.

However, as Inaara started to crawl and get her hands into more things I began to worry about germs and her getting sick. I tried to pull her thumb out when she put it in her mouth, but that made her more upset. I tried rubbing raw garlic, vinegar anything non-harmful and nasty tasting on her thumb so she would be put off by it. As it stands, my lil Angel out loves garlic, vinegar and spices. What worried me more was Inaara's thumb was now forming calluses. Yucky, at best. I asked my pediatrician what I should do... his answer, "Well, she does it as a form of comfort, try keeping her busy in something else." What I learned form that was when Inaara wanted to relax there was nothing I or anyone could do to stop her.


I went back to the Internet. There had to be away to stop her thumb sucking. I found sites where I could buy gloves and plastic thumb covers, but I was not going to spend money on something she would not wear. Plus how would she play and color with a weird contraption on her hand. I read about applying slaves (been there done that). I came across suggestions of putting a band aid on her thumb, but she sucked her thumb so hard I was afraid it would become a choking hazard.

Then one day my mom stumbled across something. If she gave Inaara a snack (ie almond) she would take her hand out of her mouth long enough to eat. So if we kept her busy with snacks we were good. I did not like that idea for very long because now I was teaching her food = comfort. Plus Inaara caught on soon enough. As my frustration grew, my mom's was worse and Inaara's thumb transformed into a nasty (sometimes tearing) callus.

Finally, at her 2 year check up I again pleaded with her doctor to help. His response "Well, she does it as a form of comfort, try keeping her busy in something else." Yes. That should sound familiar. It was the SAME thing he told me every other time. Dejected and worried about my daughter's habit and increasingly ugly and stinky thumb I went home.

Two nights later while trying to fall asleep it came to me. She was sucking her thumb to comfort herself. It was all PSYCHOLOGY! If I could do something to ruin her comfort when she sucked her thumb I had a chance to train her to think that sucking her thumb would not bring her comfort. But what would I do? I had recently begun to notice that Inaara was developing a slight fear/repulsion to bugs... and that was my key. The next morning as I woke up to the sound of Inaara sucking thumb I woke her up telling her that a bug had approached her because she was sucking her thumb, and I made the necessary moves to move/kill said bug. She immediately removed her thumb. That day anytime she made a move of putting her thumb in her mouth I would make a scene abou

t a bug and blame it on thumb sucking. My reactions were similar to what they would have been if I had spotted a black widow spider about to attack her. So yes, they were aimed to scared and make her uncomfortable. One day was all it took to cut Inaara's thumb sucking by 80% percent. In three full days she had stopped sucking her thumb. My husband made the comment that I was creating a new fear for her, but I am OK if she is afraid of bugs. I am not completely ruthless though, I did take the opportunity to teach her difference between "ok" bugs and "dangerous" bugs. Living in So. Cal, we have quite a few black widows.. at least 3 are in my garage right now. So I am OK with Inaara being scared of them, at least she is not sucking her thumb anymore.