Helping the Thumb-Sucking Child: A Practical Guide for Parents

Step-by-step guidance helps parents wean children from a potentially damaging habit.

My daughter sucked her thumb until she was nearly six years old. She wanted to stop, I wanted her to stop yet neither of us knew how to end her habit. We tried all sorts of strategies, none of which worked. Eventually, she overcame the habit by dint of sheer determination, but is wasn't easy for any of us.

I was a few years too early to benefit from the guidance of Helping the Thumb-Sucking Child by Rosemarie A. Van Norman. Van Norman, a certified oral myologist who has worked with thousands of children and parents, and is very familiar with how the stages of child development effect the development of a thumb-sucking habit and the process of ending it. Her approach is gentle and flexible, and relies on parents to tailor the general principles to their own child's situation and temperament.

Guidance for ending thumb-sucking is rare. Advice that takes into consideration how hard this process will be on the child and the potential for hurting the child's self-esteem is rarer still. For this reason, Helping the Thumb-Sucking Child is a welcome addition to the already overcrowded racks of parenting literature. -- Chicago Parent, April, 1999