Anna and the Band-Aids

So we have this little girl Anna, who will two in just over a month. And ever since she was three days old, she has been positively enamored with her thumb. She has been one of the most easy-going children ever...give her her thumb and/or her blankie, and she's happy as a clam (although I've never actually understood how the emotional status of a clam was ever determined). She doesn't just suck her thumb when she's tired. If she doesn't have anything else for her hands to do, like when she's being read to, she'll suck her thumb. And, she sucks her thumb after nearly every single bite of food she takes, as though she needs to stop up her mouth with her thumb so that the food doesn't fall out!

Anyway, since her front teeth are starting to show the signs of it, we decided that it was time for her to stop sucking her thumb. She happens to not agree with us. The first nap of "no more thumb sucking," I put band-aids on both of her thumbs (she's ambidextrous when it comes to thumb-sucking), and she screamed for two hours, fell asleep in a exhausted heap for 1/2 an hour, then woke up slightly refreshed to commence screaming again. Bedtime was not much better, except for the fact that she was too tired to wake again after another two hours of screaming about the band-aids. Or so I thought. On inspection in the morning, the truth came out: she had simply finally gotten the band-aids off.

At nap-time the next day, we tried double-bandaging the thumbs. No luck...she still got them off. So, for bedtime, I tried a new trick. Rather than just put band-aids on her thumbs, I decided to put a band-aid on every single finger, so that she wouldn't have any fingers available with which to pick them off! Brilliant, right? Er, no. The smiles were short-lived, and she managed to get all of them off in record time.






















































We put the thumb-sucking cessation program on hold for a few weeks while we were anticipating the onset of chicken pox. (They had been exposed to shingles, so I was hopeful that they would catch them. But, after three weeks of "quarantine," they came clear without pock among them-better luck next time).

But, now we need to get back at it. They do make plastic thumb guards, to the tune of $75, but we would need two of them. And, a major part of ther thumb sucking is done at meal-time, so that guards wouldn't work then, anyway. She likes vinegar. I can't yet bring myself to put hot-sauce on her thumbs. The next best option I can think of is to try putting duct tape on her thumbs instead.

In the meantime, if anyone has any tricks that have worked for them, we're all ears!