Thirty- something speaks
Sucking in the 70s

Mike Maddock

In 1974, my parents promised they'd get me a hamster if I quit sucking my thumb. To a four- year- old, this was the equivalent of a high school student getting a Porsche after graduation. So I quit sticking my thumb in my mouth and got that hamster. Of course, within two days he escaped from his cage, ran across my face in the middle of the night (at least that's the memory I'm sticking with), and got sent to hamster Heaven by a mousetrap that was meant for other creepier critters.

Hamster number two met a similar fate a week later. After that, my parents quit buying me rodents, but somehow the cage smell lingered for another month. It was a sad reminder of my Houdini hamsters with the death wishes, and a reminder that I could never suck my thumb again. I don't know if I liked my hamsters or my thumb more, but I don't remember missing either one that much.

My four- year- old son is following in his daddy's footsteps. He's a thumb sucker with ethics. In other words, he's not as easily bribed as his old man, and he has no intention of giving up the habit no matter how hard I push.

I'll admit it's my own fault. My first two children were pacifier babies, which was OK, but if either one of them woke up in the middle of the night and that pacifier was not in their mouths or in plain site, then panic ensued. My girls would scream bloody murder, and they wouldn't stop until that pacifier was found and returned to its rightful spot. So I spent many nights half- asleep scouring through crib bumpers and mattresses and crawling on the surrounding floor looking for those things. It was not pleasant. I vowed never to do it again.

When my son came along and refused a pacifier but sucked on his thumb like it was a Tootsie Roll, I was relieved. There would be no more 3 am search and rescues, and no more dirty little pacifiers. He was self- reliant, and that thumb was always going to be in plain site.

The problem is that now he's entered that age where thumb- sucking gets a little gross. He's no longer a little baby innocently comforting himself to sleep. He's just a kid who can't keep his hands away from his mouth. Since he's in pre- school, otherwise known as human rhinovirus Heaven, his little habit brings home enough stuff to keep half the pediatricians in town in business. In a few years, he'll be an orthodontist's dream come true. I can't afford it monetarily or physically.

He must be stopped. But how? I've tried hamsters and painting his thumb with this awful tasting medicine, but he's got no interest in small rodents, and the medicine eventually wears off. I'm tempted to hand him a pacifier, but that would look worse than the thumb, plus I'd have to deal with pacifier panics all over again. I'm not prepared to do that.

I guess all I can hope for is a little positive peer pressure. A critique from a disgusted classmate could be much more effective than any hamster.