Mrs. Holtzman: My son is a bad thumb sucker, he is five years old. He started Unplugging the Thumb program. Thumb sucking habit was solved immediately because he decided to quit by himself once we started your program. He is using the special sockie (he named it “William”) without problems. However, he loves the activity book and every day we have a little fight with him because he wants to do all the activities the same day. What do you think? If I agree I am breaking the correct steps. I don’t know what to do… Please give me some ideas.
Wow, that is really something new….I guess the Oral Habits Activity book is too good to be true!! I have two suggestions: First, unbind the Activity book and take out the activity pages, one by one. Since we want to involve the child in decision making as much as possible, I would still give him a choice of which activity to do. Show him two of the pages and ask him which one he wants to do first and which one he wants to do later in the day. The rest of the book/pages should be kept out of sight. Then tell him that because he has done so well with everything, he “gets” to invent an activity of his own every single day! Be sure to participate in his activity creation along with him, careful not to add any of your own input other than to praise his creations. If I were your son, I think I’d feel very proud of myself and delighted to make up new activities. (By the way, please “do” share his newly created activities with us…maybe we can put them on our website!!)