Sunday, November 21, 2010

The Lack of a Sucking Sound in My House - Well, It Can Suck

I know, I know.  I should be thanking my lucky stars and sticking my tongue out at all the dentists in town.  But I am not.  I really just wasn't ready for this.  I feel like her babyhood is slipping through my fingers and it makes me sad.

Mia stopped sucking her thumb. 

Just like that, easy peasy.  Well, there definitely was a series of events that led up to this historic moment.  If you need to figure out how to get your four year old to stop using her thumb this is what you do:

1.  Have her walk up a slide in Crocs that are too big for her over and over until she slips and falls and smacks her mouth on the slide.
2.  Make sure the fall is hard enough to move the tooth and makes it wiggly and definitely throw in a fat lip and some blood.
3.  Take her to the dentist and make sure she has a very healthy fear of "the chair", "the bubbles" (aka flouride), and "the pictures".  (This you need to work on years in advance to instill the proper level of hatred of the whole place.)
4.  Have the scary dentist whisk her away even though Mommy promised she would stay with her the whole time.
5.  Have the dentist make her cry, at least a little.
6.  Have the dentist scare her into thinking if she sucks her thumb ANYMORE her tooth will fall out.
7.  Make it hurt a little to suck her thumb.
8.  A couple of weeks later leave blankie at school overnight to truly break the blankie/thumb sucking in the middle of the night cycle.

Voila!  Now you have a four year old little girl who no longer sucks her thumb, at all.  She doesn't suck it during the day, she doesn't suck it to go to sleep, and as far as I can tell she doesn't suck it at night to go back to sleep.  This could be why she has been calling out for Mommy after any bad dream or when she wakes up, normally at 4am. 

Trust me, I was perfectly fine with the thumb sucking.

Oh, and to update you on the tooth.  It is definitely out of place, which apparantly is no big deal.  It has stopped changing color, so she won't have to get a new grill or have it pulled.  It just is slightly duller than her other pearly whites.  Gives her character.

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