Reid is still in the horrible habit of sucking his two middle fingers. I've come to conclude there are only two ways this will ever stop. Either he has to come up with the timeline himself or puppy must die. Yes, d.i.e.
Twice now we've had a month or two without any finger sucking. Way back in December of 2012 he had a really bad mouth injury that actually prevented him from sucking and the habit seemed to disappear. I don't even remember how it slowly crept back in, but obviously it did. Oh, if only I had a time machine!
Last year I had such a huge success with "you don't get a birthday party unless you start using the toilet" that shortly after the fabulous potty training experience we started focusing on finger sucking. For nearly all of December (seems to be the lucky month) 2013 he was finger free. But again, the habit slowly came back.
This year I tried the whole "you don't get a birthday party unless you stop sucking your fingers" approach and he countered with "I'll stop for Christmas." I accepted the offer (I really loved the pirate theme idea).
Well, once we took down all the Halloween decorations he started begging for Christmas ones. I'm generally a "wait until after Thanksgiving" sort of person. But yesterday I caved. I told him we could put a Christmas tree up in his and Nell's bedroom, but that, that tree symbolized Christmas ... and therefore NO MORE FINGER SUCKING.
So for Family Home Evening last night we all decorated the little fake tree together. It is at the foot of their bunk bed set. During the day, while Ben was at work, we even made a few of our own ornaments. Then while Nell napped Reid and I spent his "preschool" time sorting through all our ornaments and picking out which ones could go on their tree (basically all the non-breakables or ones I won't miss if they do break).
By the time our evening was coming to a close Reid and Nell were both wild, wild, wild. After our decorating we concluded FHE with a skype call to both sets of Grandparents. So they really went to bed all wound up.
But there has been very minimal finger sucking today! Hopefully this works, because he may have lasting emotional scars if I have to murder puppy.
Twice now we've had a month or two without any finger sucking. Way back in December of 2012 he had a really bad mouth injury that actually prevented him from sucking and the habit seemed to disappear. I don't even remember how it slowly crept back in, but obviously it did. Oh, if only I had a time machine!
Last year I had such a huge success with "you don't get a birthday party unless you start using the toilet" that shortly after the fabulous potty training experience we started focusing on finger sucking. For nearly all of December (seems to be the lucky month) 2013 he was finger free. But again, the habit slowly came back.
This year I tried the whole "you don't get a birthday party unless you stop sucking your fingers" approach and he countered with "I'll stop for Christmas." I accepted the offer (I really loved the pirate theme idea).
Well, once we took down all the Halloween decorations he started begging for Christmas ones. I'm generally a "wait until after Thanksgiving" sort of person. But yesterday I caved. I told him we could put a Christmas tree up in his and Nell's bedroom, but that, that tree symbolized Christmas ... and therefore NO MORE FINGER SUCKING.
So for Family Home Evening last night we all decorated the little fake tree together. It is at the foot of their bunk bed set. During the day, while Ben was at work, we even made a few of our own ornaments. Then while Nell napped Reid and I spent his "preschool" time sorting through all our ornaments and picking out which ones could go on their tree (basically all the non-breakables or ones I won't miss if they do break).
By the time our evening was coming to a close Reid and Nell were both wild, wild, wild. After our decorating we concluded FHE with a skype call to both sets of Grandparents. So they really went to bed all wound up.
But there has been very minimal finger sucking today! Hopefully this works, because he may have lasting emotional scars if I have to murder puppy.
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