Effects of Thumb Sucking on Dento-Facial Development by Dr Mike Mew

0:00 thumb-sucking what do you need to know first does it damage your child well it certainly can in then dentistry and orthodontics we talk about skeletal and dental effects these are divisions that we make so that we can understand points and be specific in discussion these aren't points that are delineated in the same way that you might imagine but it's common that thumbs can make a large difference in the dental positions of the teeth a thumb placed in the mouth

0:47 will tend to make the lower teeth tip backwards and/or make the upper teeth fit forwards so that the teeth are in an unusual position and that's an effect that is commonly seen but it's not always seen and some children that suck their thumb quite a lot and don't have these effects so we know that it's not clear what damaged thumb-sucking causes and that's backed up by the research that's not very obvious in its findings and the reason we think that is is that there could be two effects from thumb sucking we mention the skeletal effect the skeletal affect is influenced in two

1:33 different ways and that depends on how the child sucks their thumb some children suck forcefully pushing their thumb up as they suck the tongue to the tooth is between the teeth having effect I described commonly but the force with pushing up on their top jaw holds the top jaw up and forwards and as far as the top jaw is concerned this can actually be beneficial it can make the middle section of the face look better so although you have a dental problem the middle section of the face looks good the other type of thumb-sucking is where

2:22 the very much more passive thumb-sucking where child's mouth is more open and hanging down with the thumb just in the space between and open jaws and this is the very problematic it's a dangerous form of thumb sucking this is the thumb sucking that causes the big damage in this the face drops down more the maxilla drops lower the mandible hinge is open to gain a good understanding of this pattern of facial change it's worth seeing some of my comments on craniofacial dystrophy but in short that

3:09 this thumb sucking lengthens the face and as the face lengthens and drops back it can easily become asymmetric and that can often be determined by the nature of thumb sucking that's occurring interestingly for most children until the age of about late too early to middle freeze it's unusual to have have much skeletal damage from thumb sucking it's reported that many indigenous populations got all of the children to suck their thumbs as per normal but because of the stronger and tougher diet and because of the lack of neighs

3:58 obstructions leading to a change of the tongue posture there were very little report problems reported within these groups in fact they had perfectly straight teeth and well-developed faces and we think that there's a relatively good immunity to problems under the age of two years old before children would have started to have a high level of tough food now it brings into question whether you should allow your child to have a dummy or suck their thumb because of course one of the advantages of dummies is they can be removed it's much more difficult to remove or to isolate a thumb there

4:43 are methods to do it usually I've found it very difficult to stop a child sucking their thumb under the age of about four years old they have to cognitively want to stop sucking you have to reason that through with them and under the age of about four years old I have found that very difficult it's an interesting and quite a diverse topic and if you want more information please follow the link below