Ruthie

My son has asked me to support him in stopping sucking his thumb. He is 6 and I have not pressured him to do this. I overheard his friends bugging him about it the other day so I am not surprised. A long time ago I showed him some thumb guards online and he remembered about them and asked me to order some blue ones and I have...

Just wondering if any of you have walked down this road and have some words of advice for me.

Ruth Suyamin

Jenny Cyphers

***My son has asked me to support him in stopping sucking his thumb. He is 6 and I have not pressured him to do this. I overheard his friends bugging him about it the other day so I am not surprised.***

As a previous thumb sucker, tell those kids to knock it off. Seriously! I wish someone would have done that for me, so that I wouldn't have been tormented and pressured to stop sucking my thumb. My parents tried all kinds of things to get me to stop, for my own benefit of not being ridiculed. It all sucked! The best advice that I could offer, would be to remind him not to suck his thumb around certain people. I sucked my thumb until I was 11, I just did it in private and nobody knew but me.





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dapsign

Another thumbsucker here. My parents did everything they could to get me to stop. They finally brought me to the dentist and had a "gate" installed in my mouth so i physically couldn't stick my thumb in my mouth. I think I was 7 at the time and I wasn't ready to give it up. I just remember having this stupid piece of metal in my mouth. My parents still tell people about how long I sucked my thumb and what they "had to do" to get me to stop.

So I second Jenny's idea to remind him to do it in private.

Dina

--- In [email protected], Jenny Cyphers <jenstarc4@...> wrote:
>
> ***My son has asked me to support him in stopping sucking his thumb. He is 6 and I have not pressured him to do this. I overheard his friends bugging him about it the other day so I am not surprised.***
>
> As a previous thumb sucker, tell those kids to knock it off. Seriously! I wish someone would have done that for me, so that I wouldn't have been tormented and pressured to stop sucking my thumb. My parents tried all kinds of things to get me to stop, for my own benefit of not being ridiculed. It all sucked! The best advice that I could offer, would be to remind him not to suck his thumb around certain people. I sucked my thumb until I was 11, I just did it in private and nobody knew but me.
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

Rebecca M.

--- In [email protected], Jenny Cyphers <jenstarc4@...> wrote:

> **As a previous thumb sucker, tell those kids to knock it off. Seriously! I wish someone would have done that for me, so that I wouldn't have been tormented and pressured to stop sucking my thumb. My parents tried all kinds of things to get me to stop, for my own benefit of not being ridiculed. It all sucked! The best advice that I could offer, would be to remind him not to suck his thumb around certain people. I sucked my thumb until I was 11, I just did it in private and nobody knew but me.**

I'm with Jenny on this one. I extended thumb-sucked (until I was 9) but since I only did it at bedtime, I was ridiculed by my older siblings, not by people outside our family. But I really needed my thumb to fall asleep peacefully and I would persist no matter what my parents tried (even the bad tasting stuff on my thumb - I learned to like it). Once I fell asleep, the thumb would come out of my mouth so even rewards (money, dolls, toys) didn't worked except as a reinforcement to keep the thumb-sucking hidden.

I stopped on my own once I no longer needed to do it. I didn't even think about it.

- Rebecca

Amanda Mendenhall

I am probably not much help. I am very interested in what others have to
say about it. I have two thumb suckers. Jon who is 7 still sucks his thumb
but only when tiered. Then Emily (21 months) does too. But I never say
anything. Figured they will stop when they are ready.

Amanda M

Thomas-8

Jon-7

Emily-1



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eintob, d.a.

My daughter asked for help to stop thumbsucking at 6 also. We tried simply reminding her when she was doing it by saying "thumb" and that would be her cue to think to take it out. But she did it so habitually that all the reminders only helped a little. We did some research for more ideas and she decided to try putting something on her thumb that tasted bad so she could learn to be more conscious of doing it herself. We tried a little drop of tabasco sauce, which wasn't too hot for her, and she stopped within a couple weeks. I tried to reduce her stress about it by continually telling her that it wasn't important to us that she stopped and we loved her just the way she was, but it was important to her to stop so we helped lovingly as we could.

~Michelle


--- In [email protected], "Ruthie" <mommyofboo@...> wrote:
>
> My son has asked me to support him in stopping sucking his thumb. He is 6 and I have not pressured him to do this. I overheard his friends bugging him about it the other day so I am not surprised. A long time ago I showed him some thumb guards online and he remembered about them and asked me to order some blue ones and I have...
>
> Just wondering if any of you have walked down this road and have some words of advice for me.
>
> Ruth Suyamin
>

Robin Bentley

On May 2, 2010, at 12:52 PM, Ruthie wrote:

> My son has asked me to support him in stopping sucking his thumb.
> He is 6 and I have not pressured him to do this. I overheard his
> friends bugging him about it the other day so I am not surprised. A
> long time ago I showed him some thumb guards online and he
> remembered about them and asked me to order some blue ones and I
> have...
>
> Just wondering if any of you have walked down this road and have
> some words of advice for me.
>


Get nicer friends?

Only half-joking there. Maybe his friends need some coaching about how
to treat someone about personal things, either from you or their moms.
This is the kind of pressure that happens in school and I'm thinking
that's something you were hoping to avoid by keeping him home <g>.

I think more talking about it with him would be helpful. Does he
really want to stop or is he just feeling pressured?

I didn't suck my thumb and neither did my daughter, but I'm with
Jenny, Dina and Rebecca.

Robin B.

Cary

WHen a child asks for support to "stop thumbsucking" for example, it sounds tricky to assume that what he's REALLy asking is to have someone tell the friends what's what. I think both more talking in the line of, "hey, if you enjoy sucking your thumb, then great! We all have different things that bring us comfort." And maybe figuring out things the child can say to the friends, should they see him do it and decide to bother him, which is likely. I know a 60+ man who sucks his thumb when he watches TV FWIW. SOunds like Jenny could've used someone to stand up for her...but maybe this child really does need help fitting in the way he wants to.

SO my question is: Isn't it unsupportive of parents to "support" their children by saying "No you don't need to stop because thumbsucking is just fine and let's tell those kids to shove it." The subtext being: fitting in isn't what you really want and so I'm here to tell you you don't actually know what you want. That's the tricky part in my mind. I'm sure the child in this case might benefit from both. But maybe he is clear with what he wants which is that although he sucks his thumb, he's ready to stop for personal reasons and he doesn't quite know how now so he has asked for help.

How many kids began reading because they were either pressured OR inspired by their peers? Or anything else for that matter. I think it's a bummer to change because of pressure, but the significant point seems to be that the child isn't changing because of pressure from family. Even if my kids make decisions because of friends (or yucky friends), isn't it the support from me that will really help my children stay close to their born self-confidence? I'm not sure how I feel about trying to force my kids to feel immune to mainstream pressures. If they feel pressure, as I sometimes do, I certainly want be there to give alternative input so they feel bolstered to make the decision that is closest to their hearts, whatever it may be.

Cary

--- In [email protected], Robin Bentley <robin.bentley@...> wrote:
>
>
> On May 2, 2010, at 12:52 PM, Ruthie wrote:
>
> > My son has asked me to support him in stopping sucking his thumb.
> > He is 6 and I have not pressured him to do this. I overheard his
> > friends bugging him about it the other day so I am not surprised. A
> > long time ago I showed him some thumb guards online and he
> > remembered about them and asked me to order some blue ones and I
> > have...
> >
> > Just wondering if any of you have walked down this road and have
> > some words of advice for me.
> >
>
>
> Get nicer friends?
>
> Only half-joking there. Maybe his friends need some coaching about how
> to treat someone about personal things, either from you or their moms.
> This is the kind of pressure that happens in school and I'm thinking
> that's something you were hoping to avoid by keeping him home <g>.
>
> I think more talking about it with him would be helpful. Does he
> really want to stop or is he just feeling pressured?
>
> I didn't suck my thumb and neither did my daughter, but I'm with
> Jenny, Dina and Rebecca.
>
> Robin B.
>

Sandra Dodd

-=-SO my question is: Isn't it unsupportive of parents to "support"
their children by saying "No you don't need to stop because
thumbsucking is just fine and let's tell those kids to shove it." The
subtext being: fitting in isn't what you really want and so I'm here
to tell you you don't actually know what you want. -=-

I agree. If the kid wants help to stop, help him stop! That's not
nearly the same thing as a parent deciding to try to "make him stop."

-=-I'm not sure how I feel about trying to force my kids to feel
immune to mainstream pressures.-=-

I agree there too. Helping a child be confident and resistent to
bullying is fine, but trying to persuade them that they should just
not care what anyone thinks doesn't seem healthy.

Sandra

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Rebecca M.

> **SO my question is: Isn't it unsupportive of parents to "support"
> their children by saying "No you don't need to stop because
> thumbsucking is just fine and let's tell those kids to shove it." The
> subtext being: fitting in isn't what you really want and so I'm here
> to tell you you don't actually know what you want. **

Actually, I think that the subtext is really "as your parent, I'm okay with you sucking your thumb... there is no shame in it and there's no reason for you to quit until you are ready to quit."

My concern is that the 6-year-old boy feels he needs to change something about himself because he's experienced teasing. I don't care if someone teases a child about thumb sucking or weight or teeth or the clothes they are wearing or that they are homeschooled or...

Teasing is not okay. A child shouldn't feel obligated to change something about himself because a group of friends were being unkind.

I've spent a lot of time working with kids about bullying and most kids would much rather get punched than be teased. Kids who are teased can end up being socially isolated, so I understand why they are in such agony about it.

> **I agree there too. Helping a child be confident and resistent to
> bullying is fine, but trying to persuade them that they should just
> not care what anyone thinks doesn't seem healthy.**

Thumb sucking is a soothing activity and a very personal activity. I would encourage my child to do it privately if they are being teased about it, but I wouldn't encourage them to change (or stop cold turkey) because their friends made comments. As Robin suggested, further conversation between the mom and the child is likely needed.

(BTW, thumb guards might help but it will help more to sort out the 'triggers' for the behaviour and work from there to help the child develop other strategies that fill the same need as thumb sucking currently does.)

- Rebecca

Jenny Cyphers

-=-I'm not sure how I feel about trying to force my kids to feel
immune to mainstream pressures.-= -

***I agree there too. Helping a child be confident and resistent to
bullying is fine, but trying to persuade them that they should just
not care what anyone thinks doesn't seem healthy.***


In general, I agree. I think thumb sucking is different. It's not a social taboo to suck ones thumb. That's a case of kids being mean. If this were my kid, I'd handle it the same way I do nose picking, which IS a social taboo, IF my kid felt like he needed to stop sucking his thumb because he was being teased. I'd remind him to do it in private or not around those kids.

My experience, is that kids are brutal about thumb sucking. It didn't make me dislike sucking my thumb any less, it made me feel like kids were mean. I felt like I had to hide it and I didn't want to. Sucking my thumb helped me think and work things through. It was soothing. Not all kids are mean about it. If kids are being mean about it, it says a lot about those kids, that maybe they ARE mean.

Margaux bit her nails from the time she was a baby just sprouting her front teeth all the way until about a month ago when she decided to stop doing it, she's 8 1/2. There were times when she was younger that she asked for help to stop biting her nails. Every time I saw her doing it, I reminded her, something she asked me to do. It resulted in her hiding from me to do it. I wasn't by any means nagging her, but when I realized she was hiding from me, I stopped reminding her and she stopped hiding it. I personally didn't care whether or not she bit her nails. No amount of me helping her actually got her to stop. She stopped when she, herself, decided to stop and did so. She clipped her nails for the first time since infancy about a week ago.

My parents decided that sucking my thumb was causing too much stress for me, dealing with teasing, and I imagine social pressure on them. My experience is different from this kid, I didn't want to stop, I wanted other kids to stop being mean, so perhaps the outcome will be different. My parents tried all the bad tasting stuff too. I'd sneak into the bathroom to wash it off and then proceed to suck it off. It was mean, just as mean as the kids teasing me about it. That's how I felt.

I'd just say, that I'd go about it gently. He may still really want to suck his thumb, but not want to be ridiculed about it. Maybe he could wear a cool glove when he hangs out with those kids, or a spiderman hand accessory. If you catch the kids teasing him, tell them to knock it off.





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almadoing

--- In [email protected], Sandra Dodd <Sandra@...> wrote:
>
... If the kid wants help to stop, help him stop! That's not
> nearly the same thing as a parent deciding to try to "make him stop."
>
...
>
> Sandra


As a thumbsucker into my teens and the mother of a five year old thumbsucker I just want to add my own experience. The relentless teasing I got was from my parents who did it to try and get me to stop *in case* I was teased at school! It was in the form of comments such as "She'll be walking down the aisle with a bouquet in one hand and the other thumb in her mouth". In fact I rarely did it at school but only at home because I was at home, and supposedly private and safe. I remember feeling very sad.

My own 5 year old thumbsucker is still blissfully unaware that anyone would think it not OK, except he does tend to have one finger wiggling up his nose at the same time which we do gently discourage.

Alison
DS(7) and DS(5)

keetry

==SO my question is: Isn't it unsupportive of parents to "support" their children by saying "No you don't need to stop because thumbsucking is just fine and let's tell those kids to shove it." The subtext being: fitting in isn't what you really want and so I'm here to tell you you don't actually know what you want. That's the tricky part in my mind.==

That's a good point. My oldest used to wet the bed. He wasn't overly concerned about it until he got to be 9 or 10 and started being invited to sleepovers. Very understandably, he didn't want to be at a sleepover with a bunch of other boys and pee in his sleeping bag or have them see him wearing a diaper. If I had told him that bladder control would come with more maturity and, in the meantime, he shouldn't worry about what other people thought and I'd have a talk with the other boys about not teasing him, I don't think he would have appreciated that. What I did was took him to the doctor and got some medicine to help control his bladder for those sleepover nights. We also got an alarm that attaches to the underwear and goes off when it gets wet. After only 3 nights of using that alarm, he stopped peeing in his sleep.

I think it's normal and natural for kids in the tween and early teen years to be concerned with fitting in. It seems to be part of the process of defining who we are. I remember trying several different styles and types of friends from around the age of 10 to 15, give or take. Discounting that desire to fit in can be just as harmful as trying to make someone fit in somewhere they don't want to.

Alysia

Alysia

Robin Bentley

> I think it's normal and natural for kids in the tween and early teen
> years to be concerned with fitting in. It seems to be part of the
> process of defining who we are. I remember trying several different
> styles and types of friends from around the age of 10 to 15, give or
> take. Discounting that desire to fit in can be just as harmful as
> trying to make someone fit in somewhere they don't want to.
>
Sure, that is probably true for kids in that age group. But I don't
think we should confuse bedwetting with a comfort strategy like
thumbsucking. Plus, the original poster's child is 6.

I still think talking with a child more is a good first step,
especially when it comes to a need for comfort. Jenny's daughter asked
for help to stop her nail-biting, but she didn't really want to stop
and bit her nails surreptitiously instead. It's worth sussing out more
information, then figuring out what to do.

Robin B.

Vidyut Kale

My friend used to suck her thumb till we were in fourth grade. Not all the
time, but often. While thinking, when nervous, etc.

She used to get insulted by other kids about it to the point that she spoke
only to me and another friend and started avoiding the rest of the kids. At
least I saw it like that, though others seemed to see it as harmless
teasing. The kids in our locality at least were rather sarcastic and
condescending with her about it (I guess it came from the way their parents
spoke to them when they did something 'not good'). I used to defend her and
got caught in the crossfire often. I've had fights and run home in tears
from the cruelty to her. I didn't like it, but I was helpless to do anything
about it. She often tried to quit, but mostly she didn't even know when she
did it. She wasn't harming anyone, but the other kids were harming her. She
often asked for help from me and the other friend who didn't harrass her and
we used to remind her when we saw her do it. I don't think she was ready to
give it up, but she was doing it because it was too hurtful otherwise.

No adult ever spoke to defend her. I think her parents were hoping that the
teasing worked to 'fix' her habit. How I wish someone told those other kids
a thing or two about manners and minding their own business.

I agree with what Jenny said.

Vidyut


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Sandra Dodd

-=-No adult ever spoke to defend her. I think her parents were hoping
that the
teasing worked to 'fix' her habit. How I wish someone told those other
kids
a thing or two about manners and minding their own business.-=-

Here's the deal with school, though: Kids are put in a place where
they can't leave, with other kids their own age who also can't leave.

Everything in there IS their business, except the details about why
they're being kept there and how, perhaps. But the only way they can
begin to feel human in such a situation is to find some sort of
structure and culture and instinctive behavior within an unnatural
situation.

I think school and prison are the breeding grounds for bullies. Like
a Petri dish for fearful meanness and reactionary behavior.

Sandra

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Pam Sorooshian

On 5/8/2010 7:33 AM, Sandra Dodd wrote:
> I think school and prison are the breeding grounds for bullies. Like
> a Petri dish for fearful meanness and reactionary behavior.


I agree. It is a set-up environment for eliciting certain kinds of
reactions - and bullying is what the environment eventually builds up
to. It starts in kindergarten with teasing that seems so normal and is
so expected and just "part of childhood." It is part of the stuff that
is passed down by children. Cootie-catchers, little sing-song
mean-spirited jingles (kindergarten baby, born in the gravy...) - there
are tunes that are taunting and mean and I bet we all know them. Here is
one you can listen to:
<http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=45873>
and doesn't that bring back great memories? (sarcasm)
Mine are from 1957, 53 years ago.

In the past month or so, California has had two suicides of kids who
were being bullied at school. Funny (well, not) that people seriously
think school is necessary for kids to be adequately socialized. Once
we're really free of thinking of school as naturally part of a child's
life, it is so obvious that schooling is not a positive force in
character development.

-pam


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Su Penn

On May 8, 2010, at 12:17 PM, Pam Sorooshian wrote:

> On 5/8/2010 7:33 AM, Sandra Dodd wrote:
>> I think school and prison are the breeding grounds for bullies. Like
>> a Petri dish for fearful meanness and reactionary behavior.
>
>
> I agree. It is a set-up environment for eliciting certain kinds of
> reactions - and bullying is what the environment eventually builds up
> to. It starts in kindergarten with teasing that seems so normal and is
> so expected and just "part of childhood."

Another thing I experienced, in a relatively small town so maybe this is less true in other places, was that your reputation followed you forever. I can remember hearing people in high school talk about one of the boys who had wet his pants in second grade! You couldn't escape what people thought they knew about who you were. I didn't have a clear sense of _how_ I wanted to be different, but I remember longing to get out of school because I knew I was ready to change and felt I couldn't do it surrounded by 250 classmates who'd known me since elementary school and long since decided exactly who I was.

Twice in my 20s I was visiting my home town and ran into people who had been at the bottom of the school pecking order. One was a girl who had been "the fat girl"--I remember the kids on the school bus chanting "Orca! Orca!" as she came down the path from her house to the bus. She looked great--not thinner, but healthy and well-dressed and smiling, and she had a toddler and a baby with her. She was happily married and talked to me about how great things had gotten for her once she was out of school, how she'd made friends, dated, found this man who thought she was wonderful, had these two kids she doted on. No guy in our school was going to think she was wonderful--and if he did, and acted on it, he'd have been ostracized, too.

I had a similar conversation with the guy who had been absolutely the school scapegoat, the one universally considered to be such a loser that his name actually became something people could call each other as an insult, who'd spent his 13 years in school being constantly bullied. Both of them were also taunted by teachers who seemed to have figured out that it was a good way to score points with the kids who mattered. I especially remember the gym teacher verbally humiliating Laura.

For all three of us--the two of them more than for me, I actually had a very successful high school experience from the outside, at least--being trapped in that setting was terrible. And even if you're not actively involved in bullying (I wasn't), you witness it, you feel that powerlessness to stop it, or, for kids who are brave enough to try, you invite your share of abuse. I remember feeling really ashamed because both Brad and Laura, when I ran into them years later, thanked me for always being nice to them. All I did was say hi to them in the halls and not call them "spaz" or "fatso." I was ashamed all through school that I didn't do more. That they remembered me with gratitude when all I did was _not_ abuse them says something horrible about what their lives were like.

That system hurts everybody who moves through it. At least, that's what I believe in my darker moods.

Su, mom to Eric, 8; Carl, 6; Yehva, 2.5
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