Self soothing with fingers - encourage or discourage?

[Moulesfrites]

My ds is 8 weeks old and seems to have just discovered his hands. He has never had a dummy. He is currently lying in his carry cot sucking furiously on his fingers - by letting him do this am I setting him up for a lifelong thumb sucking habit? Or would a dummy be better?

Its up to you really. My DS never had a dummy and went through a phase of chewing/sucking his fingers. He's now 12 months and is not interested in them anymore.

However I would personally been happy for him to be a thumb sucker as I think it helps them to go to sleep (settle) and they can always find it, they tend to spit dummies out.

On the converse argument I have a friend who is 100% sure she doesn't want her child to suck her thumb or fingers to the point that she gives her the dummy all the time to stop this.

Its up to how you feel, at some point you will need to break the dummy habit and that I am lead to believe, is hard.

Thanks tigress, I have friends who say they are up every hour putting the dummy back in their dc's mouth after it has fallen out - don't fancy that much!

Ditto.

I personally think if you can avoid it then great but I have witnessed some babies who I would class as "needing" a dummy.

Good luck.

Think the finger sucking is just a stage. Mine did this for a while. They never had a dummy and they never became thumb-suckers either.

agree with wolfhound, my DS suck his fingers for a while when he was younger but soon grew out of it, has never had a dummy and doesn't suck his thumb, now 17 months.