He suction reflex It is one of the reflexes with which babies are born that helps them to ensure food (eating calms their stomach but also calms them, because they suck) and that helps them recover the state of calm that is altered by living in a world they don't understand where many things scare them.
For that reflex to be activated, they need something to suck, mainly the mother's breast, which is what nature has planned for it, although the babies who need to suck the most can get to take advantage of the shape of their finger to do it equally, as many fetuses do in the womb.
Since the last century, babies also have the pacifiers, a substitute for breastfeeding that does not feed but that allows the baby to suck and recover calm, protector of sudden death especially in babies who do not breastfeed (breastfed usually breastfeed at night, and breastfeeding is protective of the SMSL ), but that used for longer than recommended is harmful, as it can also be the finger. So you know more about all this we tell you today what are the effects of sucking your finger and the pacifier and how to avoid them.
The negative effects of sucking your finger
While the baby is small there is not much problem in this regard, precisely because it is still small, although the mother should try to offer the chest to be what you suck instead of the finger. In case it is not breastfed, the pacifier can be offered, which is softer and can be removed more easily than the finger.
When they are older, sucking their fingers helps them relax when they are nervous, calm down when they are hungry and still do not receive food and fall asleep. However, if they are still sucking beyond 5-6 years, when the final teeth appear, and they make it relatively strong, it can substantially alter the shape of the thumb (even get hurt) and can suffer an important malocclusion of the bite, as you see in the photos above, in which the teeth adapt to allow the space in which the finger goes.
The negative effects of the pacifier
The pacifier should not be offered to a breastfed child until at least 4-6 weeks of life, because the ideal is to wait until first breastfeeding is well established and the pacifier does not interfere. From that moment it is optional (as it is for babies who do not breastfeed). Some babies want it and others reject it.
In Babies and more When to remove the pacifier to avoid oral problems due to prolonged use?
For those who want it, it is a good resource at times when the baby is very uneasy if they do not breastfeed (or if they take it and is not a mother), although it depends a little on the child ... as I have explained on other occasions, my children they have not used any of the three pacifiers because they took breast, and because they did not want it (that with the first one we tried), and when it was my turn to calm them I had to invent a little ways to return them to calm.
The negative effects of using the pacifier longer than recommended are the same as in the case of the finger, the possible malocclusion of the bite if used beyond the 5-6 years mentioned. Although this effect is usually less pronounced because it is softer than a finger, the pacifier affects children in other ways:
- Children who use a pacifier breastfeed for less time.
- Children who use the pacifier intensely (who not only use it to sleep and calm down promptly, but at more times of the day) may be affected speech development, because it does not allow the logical and natural movements of the tongue and mouth In day to day.
- In addition, children who use the pacifier too long may suffer speech delays because they talk less and talk less. When they go with a pacifier, people talk to them less because they know they won't be able to answer, and when they go with a pacifier they talk less because They can't talk!
- Children who use the pacifier longer, and not just to fall asleep, suffer 33% more episodes of otitis.
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At the level of bite, as we have said, the greatest risk occurs when the baby teeth fall and the definitive ones will come out. By then the ideal is that the child does not depend on either the finger or the pacifier to sleep.
But as we said, the pacifier is used for more things than for sleeping. That's why the Spanish Association of Pediatrics explains in an article that the ideal is that:
To avoid other adverse effects of the use of the pacifier it is recommended, in all children, to limit its use until the year of life, which includes the maximum risk ages of the SIDS and those in which the infant is more in need of sucking.
If you manage to remove a year, perfect. But if it is not achieved, or if it is not even attempted (because I believe almost nobody removes it at that age), what you have to try is to prevent the pacifier from being used during the day, or in other words, limit its Use only at the time the child is sleepy and asks to sleep. This way it will not affect the shape of your mouth, so you will have freedom to speak and so you can learn to do it without an object stuck in your mouth: can you imagine going around the world with a huge candy continuously? Surely you would speak very little or nothing.
How to remove the pacifier?
Well, just like adults we take off our vices. Leaving them only for the moments when we really need them and looking for alternatives to finally leave them. What is usually summarized in not offering, not denying, replacing, to which we can also add a "grow":
- Not offer: If we want the child to stop using it, we cannot go with the pacifier behind them. For us it has to, in a way, disappear, not think of it as a resource, and consequently eliminate it from our visual field and, above all, from the child's visual field: not to see it.
- Not deny: If even if you don't see it, he asks you to, give it to him. It is enough to smell that you do not want to give it, that something has changed with the pacifier, which begins to be a "forbidden object", so that I still want it more ("they want to take it from me, I do not let it go").
- Replace: have controlled moments when we know that usually ask for more pacifier and anticipate looking for alternatives. If he asks when we go out to give him something to eat or drink, or go down to the street with the child in his arms, talking, asking him things, etc. At night, to sleep, try to fall asleep in another way, caressing, telling a story until he falls, singing a song ...
- "Make grow": This is advice for children who are 3-4 years old and up, which is linked to all the processes of "stop doing baby things". If we want a child to leave the diaper, if we want him to leave the pacifier, if we want him to behave like a child and not like a baby, we have to treat him like a child, and not like a baby.
Many parents continue to treat their 4-year-old children as if they did not have them, back all day as if they were unable to have the slightest autonomy, and what they are doing is further delaying their development. You have to let them grow, you have to let them try to do things that we always do to them (because many times they try and we, to go faster, we don't let them) and you have to talk to them as children and not as babies (that the "meow" is a cat, "tete" the pacifier and "baby" is the child).
Letting them grow, taking autonomy, they feel more capable of leaving those things that still anchor them to earlier stages. I'm not talking about "force to leave", but of "help not to need".
How to remove the finger?
The finger is less problematic for speech because it is rare for a child to go with his finger in his mouth all day. However, it is harder than the pacifier and it is impossible to eliminate it and consequently it is more capable of affecting the bite and more difficult to avoid (there are adults who suck their fingers in privacy). The tips are similar to those commented with the pacifier:
- Search for alternatives that can help you be calm, like a toy or stuffed animal, or directly accompany you until you catch the dream.
- Try sleep as soon as you notice you are sleepy: We often take time and then when they go to sleep they are less sleepy and use their finger to "provoke" calm and fall asleep.
- Help him to talk about your problems or frustrations, so that you try to overcome them from cognition and not from suction ... it is to help you grow and find other tools to find calm.
- Use some element that generates rejection: If it costs a lot, if the finger is being affected or if the mouth is also affected and needs correction by orthodontics, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that, in addition to all the above, we explain that to take care of your finger and your mouth must be bandaged or even put some substance that gives it a bad taste ... that can suck it without problem, but that tastes bad so that it does not.
Photos | Various brennemans on Flickr, iStock
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