Thumb Sucking and Child Essay

Babies will start to take an Interest in playing with fingers and opening and closing hands.

On Friday I spent the morning with Jacob who is six years one month old at College America. The morning began with a physical assessment and an interview of Jacob, and the afternoon I was able to observe him at play. Jacob is in first grade and he is the oldest child in his family with a younger brother and a younger sister. After doing a physical assessment and an interview with Jacob he appears to be an overall healthy and happy child with no obvious physical or emotional problems. According to Erikson’s developmental stages Jacob is in stage three where Jacob should be developing purpose in his life.

very hard to cope with a change, so it is important to let the child

Rooting reflex- babies move their head to look for a nipple or teat if the cheek and mouth are touched, helping the babies to find milk

biting lips, excessive lip licking and even thumb sucking are ways a child can express tensions.

According to the “Fine Motor Development Chart”, a three year old should be holding the brush with her thumb and fingers not her fist (Fine Motor Development Chart, n.d.). Her fine motor skills might be a little below for her age. However, when she was picking up blocks or taking a hat off with her fingers she displayed good finger control. She proved she could use the pincer grasp when picking the blocks. “With this grip, a child uses only his thumb and index finger to hold and manipulate small objects” (Fine Motor, 2015). This may be because she does not have experience using objects like a crayon or a paintbrush. Jackie also consistently used her right hand in all the activities I observed whether she was holding a paintbrush, toy or turning on the sink. This is an appropriate milestone for a three year old. (Fine Motor Development Chart n.d.). Jackie’s physical development can be explained by the social learning theory. “The central concept of the social learning theory is the role of imitation, and children are exposed every day to numerous examples of gender roles and activities they can imitate” (Levine and Munsch, 2016. p.331). Therefore Jackie has most likely watched her peers or her parents pick up objects using

| |At birth babies usually hold their hands tightly closed, they may open spontaneously when feeding or when the back of the hand is stroked by 6 months they can reach and |

“Step on a crack, break your mother’s back”. Who would have thought those few words could change a person's life forever? In the book, Kissing Doorknobs, fourteen-year old Tara Sullivan tells about how OCD ended up coming into her life and taking over for a time. When Tara first started getting the symptoms of OCD she did not understand what was happening to her. All it took for her to be completely consumed by one thought was that one phrase, “step on a crack, break your mother’s back”. In “As Good As It Gets”, sixty year old Melvin talks about how he was a cranky old man who had shut everyone and everything out of his life due to him having OCD. Melvin was a single man who had lived alone for as long

. By the time he is seven he should have learn how to swallow suck, grasp, cru and even palmar grasps. There are other thing that he will stop doing, for example, tonic neck reflex and grasp.

Gifted Hands is an inspirational novel based around the life of Ben Carson, from his rugged upbringing in inner-city Detroit to his position as director of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins Hospital at age 33. The novel foregrounds Carson’s struggle to defy all odds - aided by his iron will, tremendous faith, respect, meekness and an unconditional devotion to God.

I also learned that if an infant is choking and you open its mouth and you can see the object it is choking on, you have to scoop it out with one or two fingers to get it out. If you can't see the object the baby is choking on though, you have to put two fingers in between the baby's chest where the imaginary nipple line is and start to compress an inch and a half or two inches down.

During the oral stage, which occurs from birth to 1 year, the infant's primary source of interaction occurs through the mouth, so the rooting and sucking reflex is especially important. The mouth is vital for eating, and the infant derives pleasure from oral stimulation through gratifying activities such as tasting and sucking. Because the infant is entirely dependent upon

USA Today believes that as a child grows older and learns new skills, the thumb sucking habit will decrease naturally and should stop completely between the ages of three and four. The provision of a loving environment for the child will be enough to stop thumb sucking but the behavior can resurface if the child lacks attention, feels bored or becomes unhappy (USA Today, 1991). Strassen Berger shared Freud’s belief that the oral stage of development can be potentially dangerous if the mother tries to wean the infant too early off activities such as thumb sucking. If the child feels frustrated during the weaning process, they are likely to become obsessed with the oral stage all the way to adulthood. Older children who still thumb suck are likely

The oral stage of development, begins at birth (even prenatally) and ends approximately, when the child is one-year old. The source of libido or pleasure and conflict, is the mouth. The child will enjoy sucking, feeding, and putting things in their mouth. The psychological theme here is dependency. Babies can do very little for themselves, and this would be the time where they are cared for deeply by their mothers and their most intimate bonding time. When a child is deprived of this and his/ her needs are not properly fulfilled it can lead to an oral fixation or overindulgence in their later life. Fixation in this stage could lead to problems such as smoking, nail biting, pen chewing, overeating, alcoholism, sarcasm and verbal hostility. (Sammons,

As reported by the Academy of Pediatrics, oral hygiene should start at birth and continue throughout life ("Never too early to start," 2014). In the early years, from birth to the age of three, the parents have the responsibility of cleaning and caring for the child’s mouth and teeth. As a child develops, so too does their need for independence. By age three, with proper instruction, children begin to assist in the management of their oral hygiene needs ("CPS," 2013).