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Not all professionals spout this dentist's party line. I find this out after we escape from his lair and I make some inquiries. In theory, at least, pockets of enlightenment exist, not only among dentists but among pediatricians, psychologists and speech therapists. Most of them assure me that thumb sucking for security and comfort is normal. Most agree that it should be curtailed when a child's permanent teeth come in, to prevent damage to the teeth and jaw.

This seemingly universal wisdom is refuted by Dr. Wayne Eric Turk, D.M.D., a pediatric dentist who takes what he calls a "humanistic approach" to his young patients. "I only treat thumb sucking if it's causing a problem," the good doctor says, and explains that sucking does not automatically condemn a child to orthodontia since damage to the mouth depends upon the intensity, the duration and the frequency of the habit.

Children who never suck a day in their lives may need braces if, genetically, their lower jaws sit further back in their mouths and their front teeth protrude. And children whose early years of sucking cause irreversible changes before the age of three may need orthodontic treatment whether they suck after that age or not. So why force them to stop?

"Each person is an individual and should be treated accordingly," Turk concludes, and quotes from the guidelines of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentists (AAPD) that "all treatment modalities must be appropriate for the child's development, comprehension and ability to cooperate."

Tell that to the man in the diner dispensing unsolicited advice. Just what drives him to tell my kids what to do?

Sucking is a primitive act, occurring in utero and deriving from core urges for nourishment and connection. It's emblematic of our neediness, our blind dependencies. Such yearnings frighten and embarrass people. How many of us ever really get those buried needs gratified by others? How many of us figure out how to gratify them ourselves?

Anger and jealousy are stirred in adults who see a child satisfying herself blissfully and in public. "Some grown-ups cannot tolerate their own needy feelings," notes Dr. Marilyn Meese, a child psychologist. "If they don't try to make your child stop, their mastery over their own needs will crumble."

The response is similar to what people feel when they see mothers breast-feeding toddlers or hear about parents who sleep with their children. Giving that kind of solace is not thought to provide closeness or protection. It's thought to encourage over-attachment -- as opposed to the ideal of independence which is valued at a very early age.

How ironic such an ideal is, considering how many of us stagger into adulthood desperate for comfort and find it through compulsive habits far more dangerous to our health than thumb sucking.

The way strangers discipline my children leaves me with the sickening feeling I had when people put their hands on my pregnant belly without asking. I feel invaded, as I did when a woman who saw me with my month-old firstborn in the market scolded: "That child should not be out of the house at her age."

I am not immune to the pressures of public attitudes. I confess that since the oldest started kindergarten this fall, my concern for image and my fear of ridicule leak out of me, unbidden. "Do you suck at school?" I hear myself ask. "Does anyone say anything?" But since the dentist's useless attempt to make my daughter stop, I've vowed to back off, to leave it to both kids to figure this out in their own way, at their own pace, to suck as long as they need to, for as long as that might be.

I may end up in hock up to my eyeballs as a result of orthodontia. And years from now my kids may be sitting around together bitching about me: "Can you believe how oblivious she was? She let us suck our thumbs for eternity." Or they may be in hock themselves, putting in time with a therapist, bemoaning my neglect.

If so, so be it. Until then I say, suck as if your life depends on it.
salon.com | Dec. 23, 1999

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