Submitted by drplim on September 18, 2008 - 12:09pm.
Greetings James,
Children do a myriad of things which us adults, be it parents or doctors, don't understand.
I get the impression that your desire is that your child stop sucking their thumb; I imagine you believe that that is what is best for them. And I think that a healthy look into the reasons why you want that would be beneficial.
As I said in the first sentence children sometimes know what is best without having to read books, simply because they are way more in touch with their bodies and hold that importance over what others' judgements may be. And recently(ish) many mechanisms, such as thumb sucking and suckling, have been shown to be forms of the child self-correcting the bones of their skull (palatine bone, mandible, maxilla).
So my tip would be to look at what the child is doing instinctually and saying to yourself "Isn't that curious! I wonder why".
Re: Thumb Sucking
Greetings James,
Children do a myriad of things which us adults, be it parents or doctors, don't understand.
I get the impression that your desire is that your child stop sucking their thumb; I imagine you believe that that is what is best for them. And I think that a healthy look into the reasons why you want that would be beneficial.
As I said in the first sentence children sometimes know what is best without having to read books, simply because they are way more in touch with their bodies and hold that importance over what others' judgements may be. And recently(ish) many mechanisms, such as thumb sucking and suckling, have been shown to be forms of the child self-correcting the bones of their skull (palatine bone, mandible, maxilla).
So my tip would be to look at what the child is doing instinctually and saying to yourself "Isn't that curious! I wonder why".
P.