Thumb-Sucking

Did you know that prolonged thumb-sucking can affect your child’s speech sounds? Here, we briefly discuss the effects of thumb-sucking and provide some general advice on how you can help your child break the habit!⁣

👍Use a reward chart and offer incentives. Praise your child in moments when they are not sucking their thumb. ⁣
👍Allow your child a specific ‘thumb-sucking’ time using a timer to track and slowly decrease the length of time each day. Provide praise and rewards to help the process along. ⁣
👍Keep your child’s hands involved in another activity by redirecting them to another task when they begin to suck their thumb (playing with Play-Doh, kinetic sand, building blocks, sports etc.)⁣
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It’s important to not ridicule or scold a child for sucking their thumb, as this may have a reverse effect on the process.⁣