Thumbsucking

Jordan still sucks his thumb.  His dentist is increasingly ominous about it.  We worry about the effects on his jaw and teeth.  In the short term, we worry about him looking babyish, and also it's pretty unhygenic, given how dirty his hands usually are.  None of these concerns mean much of anything to Jordan, of course.

In general I'm a fan of being clear on what is your own problem and what is a problem that you think someone else has.  The latter problems are usually best left to the person that supposedly has them.  However, with a six-year-old, it's tricky.  Parents are often in the position of helping their kids be socially appropriate.  But at his age, is it up to him whether the comfort of sucking his thumb is worth whatever social consequences there may be?  (And, to be honest, I don't actually know what those are, if any.)  The orthodontic bills belong to the grownups, for sure, but he might have braces anyway -- Dale and I both did.    And it's not like we're so vigilant about hygiene in other areas.

Years ago, we were advised that many kids quit on their own when they're 4 or 5.  Then we were advised that mostly any remaining thumbsuckers quit when they start school, from peer pressure.  Neither of these occurred.  Here are the strategies we have tried:

1. Explaining the consequences (to teeth, etc).  This had no effect at all as far as I remember.  I think the consequences are just too abstract.

2. Gentle reminders.  The idea is to help him break the habit by just saying something brief to remind him not to.  This means saying something every time we see him suck his thumb, right?  Which can be a lot.  Pretty soon it's the most common interaction you have.  And it's very hard to stay patient and lighthearted when you're saying the same thing for the 500th time that day.  Thus, it becomes nagging.  And nagging very possibly increases his anxiety, which ... increases thumbsucking.  In any case our observation was that "gentle reminders" were not at all effective and were a bummer for us.

3. Nasty nail polish.  I posted about this a year ago (sigh).  I think it is genuinely nasty; Jordan doesn't like it.  But the fantasy of using it for a week or two to break the habit was not realized; we had to just keep applying it day after day.  Forever?  And Jordan experiences our putting on the nail polish as a punishment, not as a support (because stopping the thumbsucking is our decision, not something he wants to do).  It seemed not very effective and maybe a little brutal.  We still use it occasionally, but it is not the magic cure we had hoped for.

4. Positive reinforcement.  This actually is very effective in its way.  Years ago, we would reward Jordan with a jellybean if he could go for a whole car ride without sucking his thumb.  Totally worked, for the length of the car ride, and it was easy to keep jellybeans in the car.  These days, the currency is Pokemon cards or shiny rocks.  During the day, he gets a point for every couple hours he goes without thumbsucking, and five points gets a prize.  He finds this pretty motivating and the thumbsucking is greatly reduced, probably down to 10% of what we used to see.  (His tough areas are things like circle time (his equivalent of sitting in a boring meeting), waiting in line, and so on - the same sort of times when I'd be tempted to check my phone.)  We have also worked out an elaborate system for nighttime, which you would think would be impossible (how can he control it when he's asleep?):  He wears gloves to bed, and we mark his thumbs each night with a red X in washable marker so that if he sucks his thumb, the X is sucked off.  This, he can totally do, so he gets a prize every morning.  This makes him happy, and it's good to know that it is possible for him to sleep without sucking his thumb.

I was pretty excited about the positive reinforcement approach a while ago.  Now, though, I am having trouble, because I don't like the fact that whenever I'm with him, I'm monitoring him.  If he slips, I have to make it clear to him, so that he knows he's not getting a point this morning.  If he is hiding in a blanket fort he made for himself, I suspect that he's sucking his thumb in there, and I check on him.  He knows it, and says "What??" like a teenager as he's whipping his thumb out of his mouth.  If he's playing quietly in another room, I poke my head around the corner, and he knows I'm checking on him again.  I feel like a spy.  And because it's really constant, pervading our time together, it has become a major part of our dynamic.  This is not what I want spending time with him to be about!

I posted to Facebook asking friends for advice, and got a (to me) startling number of people admitting that either their children, or they themselves, had sucked their thumbs until they were 8 or 9 or even until puberty, and that nothing stopped them until they made the decision themselves.  Between that and the movie Thumbsucker (trailer here), I have been seriously tempted to drop the whole thing.  Or at least to see if we can get Keanu Reeves to be Jordan's guru-orthodontist.

After more discussion and advice, we have decided that the right thing to do is to bring Jordan into the decisionmaking.  We do our best family teamwork when we're having regular family meetings; we haven't had one in a while, but we are now motivated to reinstate them and have them regularly, with thumbsucking as one of the concerns we address during that time.  (here's a sample explanation.  Our agenda is:  compliments, concerns, plans, and a joke.)  Jordan really likes family meetings and is very engaged and creative with problem-solving during them.  This will give us some ideas in which he's a participant, and we'll try a variety of ideas, and check back weekly about how things are going.  I'm actually looking forward to it.  And if it doesn't change the thumbsucking, at least we'll all be practicing our good problem-solving skills.