Thumbs - again

Mavala Stop is an amazing product.

As I mentioned before, Daniel had his first coat of the bitter nail polish applied to his left thumb on a Thursday. Friday morning he was crying that he didn't like the stuff. Saturday, the day the next application was needed it took bribery to get him to show me his thumbs. Daniel is a chocoholic. We also decided to make him his very own chart. Every day he keeps his thumbs out of his mouth, he gets a sticker. We put stars on some of the boxes on his chart, and on those days Daniel will get a special treat of some kind.

Daniel has kept his thumb out of his mouth for 10 whole days and today is a "star day." I asked him what he wanted as a reward - a treat to eat, or a toy, or something special to do. "Eat a treat." Ice cream, cake, cookie, chocolate, fruit, Popsicle... "Chalk-it." Ice cream, cake, cookie, candy... "Cookie." All chocolate or little bits of chocolate? "ALL Chalk-it." So we made chocolate crinkle cookies and Daniel got to eat the first two.

He has been doing such a good job! We've been doing a lot of praising him that he's so big. Anything to reinforce that thumb-sucking is 'yucky.' I had been worried that he would have trouble falling asleep, or that he'd switch to his other thumb or something. To ward off the switcheroo, we've been applying the Stop to both thumbs. As long as he has a tag or one of his toys, he's been falling right to sleep. It's awesome.