How to correct children's habit of sucking their fingers? It is common for some crying children to be thrown to the pacifier by "smart" mothers, and the children will immediately calm down and become very good. It is common for some sleeping babies to dream with their fingers in their mouths and sweet smiles! It is very common for some children to suck with muddy hands in their mouths. ! Why on earth did the child do this? Is this good for children? Should mothers stop their children from doing this? What should mom do? First of all, I want to say that sucking is a common phenomenon in infancy. Babies suck anything around nipples, fingers and mouth, which belongs to primitive instinctive reflex and is a physiological sucking reflex. For example, sucking fingers, 90% of this behavior is a well-developed baby. Will naturally disappear with age. After the baby is born for two or three months, the favorite thing to do is to "eat hands". Experts say that babies and young children suck their fingers for different purposes. Finger sucking in infancy is a signal of infants' intellectual development, and it is one of the signs that infants enter the stage of finger functional differentiation and hand-eye coordination preparation. Parents should not disturb their children's happiness easily. For example, Feng Shuo Jr. is a baby that I carry with me. When he was born, he clenched his fists and waved wildly. His brain can't command his hands to put them in his mouth. By two to three months, with the development of his brain, he gradually learned two movements: one is to stare at his hand with his eyes, and the other is to suck his fingers. For him, sucking fingers is a kind of learning and playing. At first, he just put his whole hand in his mouth, then sucked two or three fingers, and finally only sucked one finger, from clumsily sucking the whole hand to deftly sucking one finger, which shows that his ability to control his behavior has been greatly improved. The action of sucking his fingers coordinated his hands and eyes, which laid a solid foundation for him to learn to grasp toys accurately in about 5 months. In addition, babies in this period mainly know the outside world through their mouths. Babies think that their hands are also external things, so they always like to put them in their mouths to suck their senses. In fact, just because you like to eat your fingers or bite other things doesn't mean that your baby wants to eat and is hungry, nor is it the reason why some people say that your baby's fingers are sweet. Eating fingers is a sign that children want to know themselves and actively explore the outside world, which shows that the baby's ability to control his actions has been greatly improved. It is not easy for a baby to send an object to his mouth by his own strength, which also indicates that the intelligence of the baby's hands and mouth movements has developed to a certain level. And sucking fingers also plays a certain role in stabilizing the baby's own emotions. When the baby is hungry, tired and angry, the fingers that suck his intimacy will settle down. If parents mistakenly think that this is a bad habit, prohibiting babies from sucking their fingers will cause dissatisfaction, crying and even mood swings. There's no need to stop it. With the growth of age, most babies are exposed to more and more things, and their hand-eye coordination and hand functions are becoming more and more skilled. They can play with novel things around them, which will gradually dilute the game of "watching hands" and "sucking fingers". This behavior will naturally disappear. Therefore, parents should be aware of the significance of children eating fingers and biting things, and don't forcibly stop this action. As long as the baby doesn't break his fingers, try to let him suck under the premise of cleanliness and safety, otherwise it will affect the development of baby's hand-eye coordination and grasping ability. Destroy the baby's unique self-confidence. Although it is normal for infants to eat their fingers, they generally follow the principle of letting nature take its course. However, if children have this habit for other reasons, parents should never stand by and realize it as soon as possible to smooth their young hearts. Children suck their fingers when they are hungry, lonely, bored, anxious, painful or uncomfortable. If this behavior is discovered by accident, or it doesn't last long, it is a normal phenomenon and will gradually disappear with age. However, if the child still enjoys sucking his fingers as he grows older, it shows that the child has a behavioral deviation. If the child's bad behavior is not corrected in time, then this bad behavior will be fixed and form stubborn habits. Some preschool children also have the habit of sucking their fingers, which will affect the growth of teeth. Too much of this action will cause malocclusion of teeth, damage mandibular muscles and jaws, and easily cause bacterial infection, so sucking fingers has more disadvantages. In addition, children who suck their fingers are often laughed at by children, which leads to his shyness, anxiety, inferiority and unsociable performance. For example, my neighbor's baby Lele is four years old, dignified and strong, with a round face and fat. She is very healthy and lovely. But I don't know when the lovely Lele developed a bad habit-sucking her fingers. One day, I went to his house He has fallen asleep and his mother is cooking. I heard a tut-tut sucking sound from the bedroom. I followed the sound and walked to Lele's bed. I saw him sleeping soundly, but he was smoking with relish, with his thumb in his mouth. I gently took his hand from his mouth and put it in the quilt. Kororo turned over, fingers involuntarily into his mouth, and so on. At this time, my mother came to tell me about Lele's recent habits and expressed her anxiety. I hope I can help her get rid of the bad habit of being happy. She said that he had patiently explained to Lele that sucking fingers was an unhealthy habit, but it had little effect. Her heart ached when she saw Lele's fingers turn white after being soaked in saliva. She tried pepper spray and mercuric chloride many times, but it didn't work, and then Lele forgot. Once again, Lele put her finger in her mouth when she was fine. Dad couldn't help it and hit him hard. Lele was restrained afterwards, but she smoked even harder when no one was looking! Le Dad and Le Mom are very upset, but there is nothing they can do. Finger sucking will hinder children's study and participation in social activities. It is a kind of performance that will cause children's inferiority complex and hostility, or a special inner emotional state. Soon after the baby is born, he will instinctively suck his fingers. If this kind of sucking happens frequently and becomes a habit, it will have a bad influence on the baby, affect the child's current physical health and mental health, and also affect the child's future development. The seemingly small bad habit of sucking fingers may directly hinder the normal and healthy development of children. If neglected by adults and not controlled and corrected in time, it will have a negative impact on children's body and mind. So what causes children to suck their fingers? The above cases all revolve around a problem: Lele has a bad habit of sucking fingers. When we analyze the reasons, we must first know that it is normal for children to suck their fingers for a period of time, especially for babies who are several months old. They put almost everything they catch into their mouths. At this time, the baby develops his own movements and knows the outside world. But sucking fingers after the age of three is problematic. The problem is your inner anxiety. Some studies believe that children suck their fingers for many reasons, such as: children want attention and love but can not be properly satisfied; Imitate adult or mass media channels to obtain; Peer imitation and reinforcement, less contact with the outside world, lack of peers; Education is not timely, and parents do not pay attention to and stop it in time; Parents are strict with their children and expect too much, causing anxiety and pressure, forcing them to return to their infancy and seek comfort from sucking their fingers, so they have developed the bad habit of sucking their fingers. So what harm does sucking fingers do to children's physiology and psychology? Because children are full of curiosity and desire to explore the outside world, they have been trying to contact external stimuli with their own parts since they came to this world. The most direct thing is to feel and touch the surrounding objects with small hands. Due to the lack of judgment on items, it is also difficult for them to identify whether the items they touch are clean. Therefore, once a child develops the bad habit of sucking his fingers, he will put a lot of bacteria and toxic substances in his fingers directly into his mouth, which will endanger his health and make the child infected with diseases, fulfilling the saying that "the disease enters from his mouth". In addition, frequent sucking of fingers can also damage teeth, because when children suck their fingers, the upper and lower incisors are unevenly stressed, which is easy to dislocate the upper and lower teeth, which not only affects the child's facial beauty, but also affects the function of teeth, thus affecting the child's health. When some children grow up, sucking their fingers will gradually become biting their nails. According to relevant medical knowledge, frequent nail biting can lead to finger skin bleeding near nails, and it can also lead to inflammation because it is often soaked in saliva. Some children bite their nails too short, and their nails lose their original protective function. And children who often bite their nails are prone to diseases such as paronychia. Children who often suck their fingers in life are easily laughed at and rejected by other children of the same age, resulting in a vicious circle of bad habits such as loneliness, anxiety, nervousness and inferiority. Children who often suck their fingers will be laughed at by their peers, which will deepen their negative emotions. Because of these bad feelings, children will get rid of them by sucking their fingers and biting their nails, which will lead to the solidification of these bad habits. Having said that, how can we correct the child's habit of sucking his fingers Children always express their emotions through their own behaviors. In most cases, their emotions are directly revealed, but sometimes they are hidden and need our careful identification. Like adults, children's emotions also have positive emotions and negative emotions. If negative emotions are perceived to be too strong or too long or suppressed, some children will express their emotions with a habitual action, such as sucking their fingers. He expresses children's emotional tension and inner anxiety in order to seek satisfaction or want more security. 1. Help children correctly understand the disadvantages of sucking fingers. In the face of children's finger sucking behavior, we should pay attention to this behavior of children and patiently find out under what circumstances this behavior is more frequent. Don't make rude criticism or tough stop or even brutal punishment once you find it, such as Lele's parents in the above case. These practices are unscientific. Every time you find it, you should take pains to warn, such as "sucking your fingers is a baby's action." You have grown up, and it is very embarrassing to do so. " Let children deeply understand their behavior. Tell more stories about germs and accompany children to read some small picture books about hygiene. Help children correctly evaluate whether their behavior is correct. 2. Don't put too much psychological pressure on children. A person's growth is always from ignorance to knowledge, from knowing little to knowing much, from simplicity to complexity, from image to abstraction. Different children have their strengths and weaknesses. When educating children, we should first conduct timely and appropriate education according to their age characteristics and psychological development level. Our parents sometimes do a lot of indoctrination education regardless of their children's actual psychological development level. Parents will think that only in this way can children not lose at the starting line and be outstanding. This kind of education not only adds fuel to the fire, but also causes psychological anxiety and fear to children, leading to unbalanced psychological development of children, and gives psychological comfort by sucking fingers. We should properly adjust the requirements for children, do not strive for perfection for children, do not overemphasize competition, and do not constantly put pressure on children. 3. Cultivate children's self-control ability. We should pay attention to cultivating children's self-control ability. Children aged four or five have developed self-esteem and self-confidence. Parents can take their children to the natural history museum to see some parasites, tell them to take their hands off their mouths and control their bad habits psychologically. 4. Example of case measures: 1) Lele always sucks his fingers when his hands are empty, so it is very important to keep his hands free. Try to attract his attention with rich game activities and toys that need to be operated by both hands, occupy her hands and reduce finger sucking behavior. 2) In the process of correcting Lele's bad behavior, praise and encouragement can be used to strengthen the child's behavior, such as giving him a thumbs up. Our guidance should not be too straightforward, we should pay attention to strategies, don't hurt children's self-esteem and don't change bad habits. 3) Correcting children's habits can't be rushed for success. Usually, children can learn about the harm of finger sucking by telling stories and looking at pictures, and observe the dirty things under their nails with a magnifying glass, giving examples to illustrate the harm of finger sucking, so that children can understand it rationally and exercise self-restraint. Through the application of the above methods, through our patience and perseverance, as long as we persist, we will certainly achieve the ideal effect.