Should you worry about thumb or pacifier sucking?
Pacifiers are often given to babies who invariably continue to use them as infants. When a parent decides to stop pacifier use at some point, the child tends to start sucking on his or her thumbs. Thumb sucking habits can also be picked up by children on their own. Although sucking on the pacifier and the thumb can be soothing for infants, it can actually alter the development of the skeletal bone. Both habits tend to cause the lower jaw to develop in a rearward position, as well as the upper central jaw bone to grow outward in a more forward direction. The teeth in effect follow the bone, so when the jaw is re-positioned like this, the teeth will also be altered. This causes the bite to be affected, resulting in a bucked tooth type of appearance. This may lead to the need of orthodontic treatment and possibly speech therapy.
It is very important to try and stop any such habits from forming. Here are a few methods to correct this habit:
- You can confiscate the pacifier. At first, your child will cry, but tough love is required.
- Hold your child more, or sing a soft song to help sooth him or her
Once you’ve started down this road, make sure not to give into the crying. If you do, all you have done is train your child to cry for long periods of time and eventually become rewarded with the pacifier. If you try and take it again after that, you will be faced with a much longer and more intense crying fit then you would had you held out.
Some ways to stop these habits
- You can try placing a bad tasting (but safe to eat) food on your child’s thumb, just enough so that they have an unpleasant taste when they put their thumb in their mouth
- For this to work, you must be consistent in the process
- For older children (5 and up), an orthodontic thumb sucking habit appliance can be cemented in to place on their upper teeth
- This appliance is used to break the habit and has a bar that goes across the roof of the mouth to crowd out the child’s thumb
- If the habit continues by the age of 5, it is likely that the bone structure damage has already occurred and active orthodontic treatment will be needed to correct this
- If needed, the same appliance can be used for active orthodontic correction
We find in our office that sometimes this appliance won’t work for children with very active thumb sucking habits (not just at night). In this case, other thumb sucking causative factors must then be assessed. This is best done by a dentist trained in such treatments.