How to Encourage Thumb Sucking

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Veronica Baragas and I'm with mywigglesandgiggles.com, I'm going to show you today how to encourage thumb sucking. Most of the time a lot of parents are skeptical or worried of thumb sucking. But most of the time it is actually very helpful and beneficial for a baby in terms of comfort and soothing. It's key when you know in all reality you have things to do, or you have situations where it's hard to calm your baby down. Sometimes their thumb is the only thing that helps. So if you show, if your baby shows natural signs of you know hand to mouth. One of the things you can encourage is kind of you know, shift the fingers into her mouth. Now if she naturally accepts, that great. If not, you know, don't push, respect whether it is that she wants to naturally do it or not. Sometimes baby's tend to kind of put all their fingers in their mouth, and that's okay too. I wouldn't try to take the fingers away, their just kind of feeling around and getting the feel. Naturally they kind of, you know, gravitate towards the thumb eventually. But I would definitely just try to respect whether it is they want to take the thumb or not. So, you know, depending on your baby it could be a great benefit for soothing and comforting themselves. So, you know, just a little light encouragement to the mouth would definitely help with encouraging your baby to thumb suck."