If the child sucks a finger
Some babies are born with a nuzzled thumb. In the solitude of the uterus, they sucked him, and no one saw. Infants have an irrepressible need to suck, and the love of the big finger, which is always near, is normal. The ability to receive comfort, in addition to parental affection, is itself a normal part of development. As with pacifiers, sucking a finger worries adults more than it hurts a child, perhaps because of unreasonable fears: "Apparently, my child lacks love and security if he sucks his finger?" Many happy, perfectly comfortable-feeling children spenda significant part of his first years of life with a finger in his mouth.
If a child sucks a finger in the first two years of life, it rarely causes orthodontic problems. If the child continues to habitually suck a finger, after he is two or three years old, this can lead to protrusion of the upper teeth( when the upper jaw is projected forward).In our experience, we can say that smearing a finger with bitter substances, pulling out a child or putting on a mitten is almost always useless. And if your child is big enough to hurt his teeth by sucking a finger, then he is probably big enough to understand that sucking a finger can harm his teeth. About whom you should worry, it's about the children who suck a finger the night away. As an alternative to a finger, give your child a large cozy toy( for example, a large teddy bear, which the child can hug with his hands and thus lose the opportunity to reach his finger).Check it several times a night and take your finger out of your mouth. To disaccustom a child to suck a finger during the day, do so that both his hands are occupied, and as soon as the mouth and finger are ready to rejoin, offer your child a game that requires the use of both thumbs. In my office, if I need a child to take a finger out of his mouth, I tell the child: "Give me five" - and then: "Give me five more!" Try not to make comments to the child - a permanent verbal reminder can actually be fixedthe habit of sucking a finger, drawing attention to it.
For parents who want to free the child's mouth from a finger, but from paying for an orthodontist in the future: think about such preventive measures. The only study we could find on reducing the risk of sucking a finger in an adult child was a comparison of fifty children who had the habit of constantly sucking a finger, with fifty children who had no such habit. Are there any factors predisposing to sucking a finger? Researchers found that in most cases, children who suck a finger, received artificial feeding. Much more often they were fed on schedule, and not on the first demand. Ninety-six percent of the children sucking their thumbs were left to fall asleep alone. Children who do not have the habit of sucking a finger, were in different conditions. The later the child was weaned, the less was the risk that he would suck his finger. And children who never sucked a finger, lulled on their hands, often at the mother's breast, rather than forced to fall asleep on their own. These researchers took the postulate that sleep is regressive activity, during which the child returns to a more primitive activity, which he did in the womb, such as sucking a finger and touching the mouth with his hands. They believe that if a child is allowed to suckle until he goes to sleep, his desire to suck finds satisfaction and the habit of sucking a finger to fall asleep does not work out.
This coincides with our own observations - the need, satisfied in early childhood, disappears;a need that is not satisfied in early childhood does not pass, but appears later, sometimes as a bad habit.
In our own practice, we repeatedly noted that children who are breastfed until they fall asleep, which I do not restrict?night feeding and which are not taken prematurely from the breast, it is much less likely to get a habit of sucking a finger.
What a natural and cheap way to avoid dental plates!