What to do with a baby finger sucking ?
Some babies suck their fingers in the mother’s womb after birth and others. It has been proven that finger sucking calms the baby and therefore the baby continues this behavior.
One of the reasons for finger sucking can be the anxiety of the baby, the anxious child in times of fear and in the face of conflicts by subconsciously sucking the finger to his relaxation period in the mother’s arms and sucking milk. On the other hand, a group of prematurely weaned babies also resort to finger sucking to compensate for the mother’s breast sucking reflex.
The older you get, the more stress you have, so the dependence on finger sucking increases. Finger sucking seems to be more common in girls than boys.
To deal with finger sucking, if there is a stressful situation in the child’s environment, those conditions should be eliminated. For young children, draw his attention to a strong stimulus. Like playing with dough or rosary, holding hands, painting, coloring, making puzzles, varnishing and doing manicures for girls and other things, in which case the goal is for the child’s hand to be engaged in an activity.
Tips for dealing with baby finger sucking
Control time. For example, a child who sucks his finger for 30 minutes while sleeping, we first control his hand for 5 minutes. After getting used to 25 minutes, we set the time to 20 minutes, that is, we reduce each step that he successfully passed by 5 minutes.
The use of other methods of behavior change such as extinction – reinforcement of contradictory behavior – deprivation of positive reinforcement, punishment, compensation is also effective.
The reminder method is suitable for treating children who have the necessary cooperation and who themselves tend to give up the habit. In this method, a waterproof tape can be attached to the finger of sixty children to remind the child not to put his finger in the mouth.
