What to do with thumb sucking habits?

The survival of a newborn baby depends on instinctive nutritive sucking, which allows for essential nourishment, because infants also engage in nonnutritive sucking of their fingers and thumbs. This provides them with a sense of well-being, comfort, and security. Thumb sucking however, can also have negative influences on both dental development and speech that you will be able to notice later in your child’s life. After the age of four, correction of a thumb habit may involve using psychological or physical preventive measures. The ultimate goal, however, should be to correct the cause of the habit, rather than the habit itself as some people might think. It is important that you understand the mouth provides a baby’s first contact with the external world. In addition, sucking is an infant’s first coordinated muscular activity. Babies even suck their thumb before they are born, which could prove this opinion. Since prolonged thumb sucking, can deform a child’s upper dental arch, provoke crossbite, protrude teeth, and create an open bite, your child should definitely receive treatment if there is present prolonged thumb sucking. The extent of these negative consequences depends by the duration of the habit. It is also depending from the daily frequency of the habit, and the manner in which the thumb places into the mouth. Children tend to suck their thumb when they are tired, bored, under stress, or in need of comfort, so you should understand why your child sucking the tumb at first. Taking away the soothing effects of a thumb habit may result in poor conduct by the child, and preventing a thumb habit, against the wishes of a child, may result in learning problems, bed wetting, sleep disorders, initiation of a new habit, or persistence of the old habit. Evaluation by a psychologist, pediatrician, and pediatric dentist may be necessary for the eventual resolution of the problem in many cases.