Rule Of Thumb Thumb Sucking : Myths & Realities

There’s nothing cuter than seeing a little child, lost in his own world, with doe eyes fluttering away innocently and a thumb jammed between his rosy lips.

- Reshma O Pathare

Wait! Did you say, ‘a thumb jammed between his rosy lips?’ Whoa, there is nothing cute about that. If anything, it’s a mother’s worst nightmare.

That is more or less what you will hear from any mum whose child looks at its thumb as a life-support, and cannot seem to function without popping it into his mouth. Exasperated mothers have been known to try everything from applying neem paste or salt on their child’s thumb, to scaring them into resisting the habit, but with little success. It is common to see parents having sleepless nights about how their child might be seen as an anxious, non-confident being, and how the thumb sucking might be a sign of something drastically wrong with its psychological health. But on a rational note, is thumb sucking really that much of a villain as it is made out to be? Or, is it something that parents need to take in their stride and give the child time to slip out of in an organic way?

A WAY TO REGULATE EMOTIONS