Should I use a dummy or let her suck her thumb?

[Claire]

I'm all for the thumb myself.

My daughter sucks her thumb when she's tired and that's about it - she's formed that as a sleep association and it works for us.

[BereavedBella2007]

hi there, before i had my first i was certain that my children would never have dummys untill the day my mum said to me,
"Girly if a childs going to be a sucker then they'll be a sucker, givem a dummy you cant throw a thumb away"

then she reminded me of her exhusbands daughter who was still sucking her thumb at fourteen

My kids got dummys
my Daughter chose to have neither dummy or thumb

[MantaRay]

I have never been keen on dummies, but I have tried both boys with them. Neither would have a bar of it. Luckily Jack was not really interested in his thumb either, he sucked it for about 3 weeks then stopped. Hair twirling is his thing.

Thomas on the other hand is a very avid thumb sucker and doesn't look like stopping anytime soon. I have mixed feelings about this - at least he can self-settle and I'm not getting up in the night to replace a dummy or dealing with tanties in the car bcos the dummy was dropped etc as I have had friends go through. But my sister was a thumb sucker who needed a lot of dental work so I am worried about longer term. But my approach is to let it go for the time being. He has only 2 teeth now, and he is so young. And I probably can't do much to stop it anyway. When he is older and he can understand things, I can try then to give him alternatives (if he doesn't stop by himself anyway, which they often do). So personally, my advice would be, go with the flow, and worry about it later if it's still happening then. You might find it just stops anyway and you've worried for nothing.