Do dentists give their children dummies?

[coldandflu]

I'm wonderimg if dummies are that bad.

I'm back on the dummy 22 months. It's an ortho one.

I’ve been a dental nurse for 37 years, both mine had dummies. Not that difficult to wean them off. One of the kids of the dentist I work with was still sucking his fingers when in high school! Very difficult to wean them off that!

My dentist didn’t give me a telling off about mine having a dummy. We removed it 11 months ago when he was 2.5 and he still asks for it, he complained today he had to give them to the babies last year 😅

I far preferred the dummy. My boys had dummies to sleep and my girl sucked her thumb. Guess which one had the most extensive orthodontic treatment because they had completely altered the shape of their palate from constant thumb sucking.?

I can't now find the study, I'll have a look, but when I was looking for evidence I found a large study where the difference in rates of abnormalities between dummy use and control were minimal when removed before age 3. After that the rates jumped sharply.

I know speech therapists are not keen on dummies beyond 6 months as they can affect speech development in children.

I think dummies can be helpful in preventing SIDS, so there are pros and cons.

Only one of my dc had a dummy for a short time. None of my other 3dc would take them. I wish they had as they may have slept better , instead I suffered years of sleep deprivation 😴

i can tell the nursery age children who over-use dummies, by the indent in their teeth and their speech patterns. My child had one, but only for sleep, given up by 2 and was never allowed to talk with it in.

Not a dentist but none of my 4 had dummies and none suck their thumb, it’s not inevitable at all!

With my DD I never gave her a dummy at the start, I didn't want the struggle of getting her off it later and didnt want to damage her teeth or affect her speech. However she was (and still is) a really terrible sleeper and constantly wanted to comfort suckle on the boob. Every minute she was asleep she wanted to be attached to the breast, if I gently removed her when she was asleep she woke up in a panic that I took it away and desperately searched for it again, she wasnt even feeding alot of the time, just comfort sucking. It was making me so sore and meant I was getting no sleep. I think it also added to her complete bottle refusal as she wasn't familiar with the feeling of silicone in her mouth. Through exhaustion I then desperately tried getting her to take a dummy so that I could have a break and hopefully she would sleep better but at that stage she had no interest in the dummy and she didn't understand why I kept shoving a piece of plastic in her mouth. Shes still the same now at 8mo although not quite as bad but she never did take to a bottle or a dummy. I think if I have another baby and they are the same as she was I might consider giving a dummy earlier for those reasons

Agreed - I know a 14 year old who sucks her thumb and her dentist won’t do braces for her because of it

Both mine had dummies. My dentist was very relaxed about it, he had twins so might explain it. His recommendation was dummies for sleep and wean off by preschool/age 3.

My youngest had speech therapy. He is autistic. He used the dummy for sleep until age 3.5 otherwise there was about 4-5 hours sleep a night vs 8-9. He dropped his day nap before 2 unless we were in the car so he wasnt having it in the day. Speech therapist took a completely pragmatic view that it met some kind of sensory need and on balance a 3 year old needs more than 4 hours a night sleep to support the brain develoment needed for language.

Yes. I used to pull DS thumb out of his mouth and stick a dummy in when he was a baby!
He stopped his dummy age 2.5. Thumb sucking is a much worse and harder habit to break

All this 'had a dummy, now has braces as a teen', don't most people have some amount of orthodontics as a teen? I'm always very surprised when adults I know mention they didn't have braces. It can't be more than about a quarter of people (of those whose parents could afford it). Dummies might not be good but very few people are blessed with naturally straight teeth anyway.

@Swearwolf my son's paediatrician recommended a dummy as he had severe reflux. He said the constant swallowing would help prevent scarring of the oesophagus due to the acid. That meant daytime use as well as night.

I hated the judgement from other parents. He started preschool nursery at 3 and we started weaning him off it at this point. He did have speech therapy in nursery but just to re-learn a few words he learned to speak around the dummy. Every time he talked we took it out of his mouth but there were a few words to undo. I was a sahm so was able to be there to remind him to take it out to talk.

He still has reflux and is now an adult. Never grew out of it but learned what kicks it off. I am glad we did give him the dummy because I know how often he refluxed.

I was really worried about my dcs teeth because both my dh and I had braces in our teens. ( i never had a dummy) On the other hand I was thrilled when I was exhausted and at the end of my tether and they took a dummy and went to sleep! All of my dc needed braces, though only 3 of the 5 had dummies, and those that did were only allowed them in bed, they left them in the cot when they got up. They all gave up bottles at 12 months too because the hv told me that milk in bottle was detrimental to their teeth.

This is my thinking as well. Surely very few people have perfectly straight teeth anyway and the people I know who have had braces to correct their teeth end up with better teeth than the ones who didn’t qualify for them because their teeth were naturally strightish! I didn’t have a dummy as a child, I had bad teeth and an overbite, had braces as a teen and didn’t keep up with the retainer, now doing Invisalign as an adult. DH did have a dummy, his teeth are pretty straight and didn’t qualify for braces as a teen. My teeth will definitely be better than his when my treatment is finished!

Both of my kids had dummies until about 3. I’ll admit to not being particularly strict about its use, they definitely didn’t have them in all day long while playing and I encouraged it being removed while talking but if they were tired, grumpy, wanted to chill and cuddle, sleep times, in the car etc yup they had their dummy. Both hit their speech milestones ahead of time and their teeth look fine for now at least. If they need braces… well they will get them. I don’t know what the big deal is.

No never gave mine a dummy and neither have any of my colleagues other than one who had a very premature baby where research says a dummy helps reduce chances of SIDS .

Dentist here. I gave my DS a dummy. He started sucking his thumb, and as my DSis, also a dentist, says “ you can take a dummy off them but you can’t remove a thumb”.
As long as you don’t dip the dummy in anything, in the past they were dipped in honey, sugar or jam, and you just use it to pacify, keep them quiet when you can’t feed straight away or when they are dropping of to sleep. Then they aren’t going to do a great deal of damage.

I breast fed DS exclusively and it was useful if I couldn’t breast feed straight away. Also at night he would comfort feed to go to sleep so a dummy was useful. I would remove it as soon as he was asleep.

DS wasn’t allowed a dummy at other times. He only had it when needed so didn’t wander around with it hanging out of his mouth 24/7. He associated it with sleep and as he got older would reject it as a stop gap for food. As soon as he dropped off it would be removed.

He did have to have extensive orthodontics but not as a result of using a dummy. He had stopped using a dummy before his teeth erupted so it had no effect on the position of his teeth. Pure genetics I’m afraid, his DFs side of course.

I know one ... yes

Thank you for this - desperately trying with my 5 year old at the moment before big teeth come in!

Yup, I gave mine a dummy partly to manage reflux and it would be easier to stop a dummy than thumb sucking. They had some arch narrowing which may have been due to the dummy but I'd stopped it by 2.5.

Same here. We had dummies around when DS was tiny but he never took to them, doesn’t suck his thumb either. I consider us blessed that we don’t have to try and wean him off either!

My dd had a dummy at night I think to the age about 5! Absolutely no impact to her teeth. At her orthodontist appointment at 14 the dentist commented that she had perfect teeth! I asked if her dummy use had caused any problems and she didn’t believe she’d used one. Maybe just lucky.

Maybe because not every child in the world is the same as your children? As other posters have pointed out, many children who don’t have a dummy will naturally thumb suck, which is equally detrimental to teeth and an even more difficult habit to break.

In our case, we gave a dummy because it was recommended by the hospital nurses when DS was admitted at 4 days old with bronchiolitis. It was literally the only thing that soothed him and helped him to sleep. He kept it until around 18 months (nighttime only) and then we removed it. No harm done 🤷‍♀️

My DF was a dentist and he was vehemently against the use of dummies. He wouldn’t entertain the prospect of using them for his own children.

I'm not a dentist but I remember worrying about my sons dummy use after the dentist told me his teeth would form a dummy shaped gap at the front. We finally quit dummy at around 3/4 - now 11 and teeth are fine.

We started dummy when he was a small baby and it was an absolute saviour so I have zero regrets!