When my oldest daughter was around four or five, I remember writing a desperate question to a gentle parenting group online. The responses I received left me guilty, ashamed, and in tears. My instincts told me she needed to stop sucking her thumb, yet gentle parenting advice seemed to say otherwise. Torn and overwhelmed, I eventually found a way to help her stop during the day. At the age of six, she decided on her own to stop at night too.
In this post, I want to share how we gently reduced my daughter’s thumb sucking, the support we offered when she wanted to give it up completely, and the challenges that surfaced once the comfort of her thumb was gone. Now, two years on, I’ll also reflect on the changes I’ve seen in her since leaving this habit behind.
When My Gut Instincts Spoke Louder
When my daughter was around four years old, my instincts began telling me it was time for her to stop sucking her thumb. Every time I saw her do it, something in me grew restless and uneasy. I knew it had comforted her for years, but I was becoming increasingly concerned that it was no longer helping her in healthy ways.
At the same time, I was wrestling with the messages I received from gentle parenting spaces. I was told to leave her be, that asking her to stop would not be respectful of her needs, and I would be taking away a major source of comfort. But inside, I felt turmoil. I couldn’t silence my gut. I felt like she should be using me for comfort, not her thumb. I also was convinced it was blocking her from truly feeling frustrations and sadness, as the thumb literally blocked her tears from falling.
Ungentle Frustrations and Regret
That turmoil often spilled out in ways I desperately wish it hadn’t. I snapped, I got irritated, sometimes openly frustrated. But in truth, my frustration wasn’t with her. It was with me.
I had encouraged her thumb sucking when she was younger, and I hadn’t always had the capacity to sit fully with her when big feelings came. As a mum of three—including twins who were still very little—I relied on her thumb sucking as a way to keep the household calmer. She was empathetic and easy-going, and what I didn’t realise then was that much of this was because she was bottling up her sadness and strong emotions rather than expressing them.
When I apologised to her, I made it clear that none of this was her fault. It was mine. I owned my feelings, and I told her I’d be with her no matter how messy things got when she decided to stop.
Making the Decision Together
Eventually, I reached the point where I felt I had to gently intervene. I explained to my daughter that this wasn’t her fault—it was something I had allowed and even encouraged when she was tiny. But now that her daddy was home a little more and her siblings weren’t as clingy, I had the time and energy to really support her if she wanted to stop. For context, we had previously had conversations from our ‘strict authoritarian styled’ dentist who had said when she was 3 that she needed to stop. Perhaps this wasn’t very gentle, but I showed her online photos of people with open bites caused by thumb sucking, which she didn’t want.
I was honest with her that it would be hard, that it would bring sadness and tears, but that I would stay beside her through all of it. If she ran off sad, I followed her. Sometimes, when she instinctively put her thumb in her mouth, I gently pulled it away while sitting with her, helping her hold space for her feelings instead.
She did incredibly well. With patience, persistence, and a lot of emotions along the way, she stopped sucking during the day. Not long after, at six years old, she chose to stop at night too.
Tips That Helped Stop At Night
When I researched gentle ways to help my child stop sucking her thumb, most suggestions were things like applying bitter-tasting lotions or using reward charts. These didn’t sit well with my parenting instincts. After having deep conversations with my daughter about how our circumstances had changed and expressing that I was ready and willing to be the Mum she deserved, I came across thumb guards.
I purchased several designs, and one pattern captured her heart. She chose to wear them some days and not others. I was still desperate for more sleep and not quite ready for more night wakings, so I had allowed her to continue sucking at night, just not in the day. However, when she became serious about stopping at night too, on her own accord, the obvious solution was to put the thumb guards on at night. She wore them for a couple of weeks, and that was the end of her thumb sucking story.
What Followed: The Storm of Feelings
The first year after she gave up her thumb was a storm of emotions. What I saw were toddler tantrums—but in the body of a six-year-old. Screaming, tears, full meltdowns, even in public places. She sometimes pulled at her hair, and small frustrations became enormous explosions.
Looking back, I believe these were emotions that had been pushed down for years by the comfort of her thumb. It was as if the dam had finally broken, and everything came rushing out at once. Her big feelings were raw, unfiltered, and sometimes relentless.
Yet slowly, the storms began to ease. Within a year, her outbursts softened into tantrums that, though still tiring, were far less extreme. By the time she was eight and a half, they happened only occasionally—nowhere near the intensity of those early months without her thumb.
A Change in Her and Me
Before stopping, she had always been seen as “the easy child”—empathetic, gentle, and even tempered. But I hadn’t realised that much of that calmness came from her way of self-soothing rather than truly releasing her emotions.
When I finally committed to helping her let go of that crutch, everything changed. She became freer to express her feelings, even if at times it was overwhelming for both of us. And I changed too. I embraced her meltdowns rather than fearing them. I learned to sit through them, by her side, to witness her tears and screams without taking them personally.
There were moments in the thumb sucking journey, in her last months of being a thumb sucker, when I even really struggled to be fully present with my daughter—I blocked my ears and shut my eyes so that I could continue to sit beside her. That reaction came from my own struggle, not hers. Today, I’m grateful I chose to face it and guide her through.
Where She Is Now
It’s been over two years since she last sucked her thumb. She is thriving, growing steadily into herself, and continuing to find healthier ways to cope with the storms inside. Recently, she tried to suck her thumb to understand why she used to do it and she laughed and informed me that she was unable and unwilling to do that again.
This journey wasn’t simple, and it wasn’t without mistakes. But what stands out most is that we did it together. Hand in hand, through guilt, through tears, through apologies, we found a way forward. And in helping her release her thumb, we both grew in our ability to hold space for what really matters—the deep, messy, beautiful world of her feelings.
Gentle Parent 