Cal's Goal Charts

Had we known how hard it would be to get Cal to stop sucking his thumb back when he started sucking his thumb, we may have thrown a sock over his hand and either plugged a binky in his mouth or just bucked up and weathered the storm of his not having a thumb or a binky to sooth him.  Clearly, the binky would have been a nice Band-Aid that we would eventually rip off at no choice of Cal; it may have been a struggle to get him to actually use it, though – Cal really never took to the binky.

I don’t know if we could have weathered the storm of no binky and no thumb.  Cal wasn’t exactly “happy” as an infant.  After weeks of broken sleep and busted eardrums, we were happy when he found a way to sooth himself with his thumb – always his left thumb and gently holding his earlobe with his right hand.

For the past year and a half, we’ve had many rounds of failed attempts to get him to stop.  We probably always knew we’d have to tackle it at some point (or, perhaps more accurately, just assumed he’d simply stop as he got older).  But consciously attempting to get him to stop was really triggered by his first visit to the dentist who pointed out how the roof of his mouth and his teeth were basically re-forming to the shape of his thumb.  When he bites down, there’s a fairly sizable gap between his top and bottom teeth.

His mouth is the shape of his thumb.  Message received by Mommy.

That was a year and a half ago.  And he’s still sucking his thumb.  His teachers tell us that he doesn’t suck his thumb at school, so it seems that it’s isolated to the car, his bed and the couch when he’s watching a movie or “episode.”  Left thumb in mouth, right hand holding earlobe.

More often than not, an accusatory “Cal…” or a stern “no sucking your thumb” will get him to stop sucking his thumb in the car; and the threat of turning off the movie or episode if he keeps sucking his thumb is enough to get him to stop on the couch.  Bedtime, though, is impossible.  Lay head on pillow, receive kiss from parent, insert thumb in mouth and suck.  It’s automatic.  And strong.  I’ve had to use my body as leverage to pull his thumb out of his mouth while he’s asleep only to see it quickly get put back in.

We’ve tried a number of things to get Cal to stop sucking his thumb.  Threats of braces and mouth surgery, hot sauce (once), bitter “THUMB” stuff, threat of telling the dentist on him, sock on hand, put hand under pillow, star incentive chart, “your little sister doesn’t suck HER thumb” and the Thumb Guard.

What a disappointment the Thumb Guard has been!  I don’t remember the exact statistic quoted, but I remember it as having a 99% success rate.  That’s right.  99%.  99% of the time, using the Thumb Guard will get your kid to stop sucking his thumb.  My kid, of course, is in the 1% failure rate.

I think that the Thumb Guard really only works if the kid wants to stop but just can’t.  If the kid wants to stop, he won’t wrestle the Thumb Guard off of his thumb – he’ll appreciate it being there to stop him from sucking.  If the kid – CAL – doesn’t want to stop, he CAN wrestle his thumb out of the seemingly escape-proof contraption.

A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking hard about this.  How do we get Cal to WANT to stop sucking his thumb?  His Dora tricycle recently fell apart as he was riding it, so he’s been without that for a few weeks.  He’s at the age when he can start learning how to ride a bicycle, something he doesn’t yet have; so I figured with Dora trike and no bike, maybe a bicycle would be a good incentive to get him to stop.

I ran this past Dan, and we decided that if Cal went 30 days straight without sucking his thumb we’d get him a bike.  We would make Cal a countdown chart to keep track of it.

Cal liked this idea and made most of the chart himself with promising enthusiasm.  I wrote the numbers 30, 20 and 10 vertically on a big sheet of paper, and he added all of the other numbers and drew a box around each one.  Dan printed out a picture of a bicycle and cut it out; and we taped this just to the lower right of the 1.  As Cal had a thumb-sucking-free day, he could put a Post-It note with a big X over the left-most un-x’d number.  If he did it again the next day, he could add another X.  If he sucked his thumb, we’d remove all X’s and start all over.

No Thumb-Sucking Chart (9/25/13... and still today)

That was a couple of weeks ago.  Note the number of Xs.  ZERO.  He just… can’t… do… it.  We even tried the Thumb Guard once – Cal told Dan that he wanted to use the Thumb Guard to help him (a first!); so I put it on him (no tears, no resistance), he proudly showed his daddy that he had it on, he climbed into bed, and then he proceeded to wrestle his thumb out of it.

The bike is not looking too good.

After several days of getting no X, Cal decided he needed a second chart with more achievable Xs.  Being on the receiving end of seemingly endless comments like “put your listening ears on” and “be a good listener,” Cal thought it would be a good idea to have a “good listener” chart, but not for 30 days “because that’s too long.”  He decided we’d track his good listening for 10 days.

I warmed up to this idea quickly.  “What would be a good goal, something that you’d get after those 10 days of good listening, Cal?” I asked.

He thought for a moment and said, “I don’t know.”

“How about if you are a good listener for 10 days in a row, we’ll go to Choo Choo Johnny’s or Chick Fil A for dinner.  Does that sound good?” I asked.

“Yeah, Chick Fil A!” he responded immediately.

So we pulled out another big sheet of paper and Cal created his chart.  10-9-8… 1, putting boxes around each number just as he had on his no-thumb-sucking chart.  And then he added some text:  “Good-Listening-For-Cal-and-Ella” it read.  Oh, oh.  Ella got roped into this.  Not a good idea, Cal, I thought.  To say that Ella is having a few issues with her listening ears lately would be the understatement of the century.  I later told Dan that this would be a good thing – it would surely keep us from eating out as often as we have been.

We are a few days into the good-listening chart, which has since been updated:  Ella has her own countdown now, and I need not explain how that evolved.  Dan and I have suggested that when they collectively have 10 Xs on their good-listening chart, we’ll go to Chick Fil A.

Good-Listening Chart (9/25/13)

I like it.  It’s working.  If I were a betting woman, I’d say we’ll get to Chick Fil A a few days from now, practically all on Cal’s ears.  My hopes for Cal and a new bike, however, have dwindled to zero.