puttings fingers in d mouth
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Updated on Aug 01, 2013
hello to evry1.... my daughter is 3 yr old n has a very bad habit of putting her fingers in her mouth.... she dont suck her thumb , its just dat she puts them in her mouth frequently n sometimes bit her nails too n due to this she frequently gets sick( most of d time its throat infection)... i m tired of telling her not do it... n some times i even loose d temper n shout n hit her but all in vain... pls suggest me some trick or tip to get her rid of this habit
| Aug 01, 2013
Dear Ambika, It seems that you are really troubled by this habit of your daughter. Though it can really be tough to be in complete control of your temper as a parent, however it's a fact that by adapting to practices like shouting or hitting the parent unwittingly transforms normal disagreements and non-compliance to long battles. You have yourself discovered that such practices never work and only add to complexity of the situation. It will be a great idea for you to re-consider your approach and abandon hitting and shouting all-together. Though as parents we get impatient many a times while dealing with our kids, we just wan't them to abandon their own thinking and listen to us, comply to our commands, we believe that they should listen to us always and why not we are their parents after all. However parenting may not necessarily be what we believe it to be. May be it is an equal opportunity for us to learn and grow beyond our own weaknesses. May be kids are there to challenge us so that we see where we stand - how much can we take, how much patience we really have and how much love can we give - unconditionally. Anyways, the above words were just my outpourings and may not mean anything to anyone. Now to move to your concern, That is your daughter's habit ... You may feel calm to know that it's perfectly normal for a chld of this age to do so. My son now 4. 5 yrs has done it for some months. Most of the times the child outgrows it automatically or may be by gentle and firm prompting by the parents. Whenever you see her with her fingers in the mouth you may ask her gently - "baby, why are you sucking your fingers... tell me what do you like about it. " - Your daughter may come up with several replies and you can link the replies to her needs or likes. you may ask further to make sure what does she like about it and suggest alternatives. Understanding the cause will promote trust and she may stop it on her own. May be she does it whenever she is afraid or hungry or confused or angry. Another approach that you can try is to link her act of putting her hands to some other activity like washing hands with soap. you may tell her that she is free to suck her fingers anytime but she just need to wash hands before sucking else do something else--- do it like a game. Hope that helps :) :) :)
| Aug 02, 2013
Hi Ambika! I completely agree with Gaurima and second her on the thoughts that we have to come up to kids level and not go down by adopting means such as hitting shouting etc as it would hurt us more in the end. The act of putting things , fingers, thumb is not something that child is doing intentionally , it is one thing that becomes a habit and is out of child's control. He/she is seeking our help in getting rid of this habit. So to outgrow it we need to work together with our child. The steps that can be taken as Gaurima has already mentioned first we need to make the child realize that he/she is doing something like this. We need to bring it to child's notice when is this act more frequent may be while watching TV, studying, sitting idle, etc. so we can ask the child how this act helps him/her. What can be the alternatives. What can be the fall outs of doing this, what can we as parents do help them get rid of this. In other words pls reach out to ur child n help her shun this habit.
