PUBLISHED IN TCI WEEKLY NEWS
19th April 2014
Pacifiers, soothers or dummies are often used with babies or young children as soothing devices to calm them and help them get to sleep. From personal experience as a dad myself, one of my children as a baby was particularly attached to his dummy at night time, so I know the benefits it can give both baby and parent.
However, from a dental perspective there are downsides. Regular use of a pacifier, or regular thumb or finger sucking will affect how the teeth grow and develop and will encourage an open bite and/ or protruding teeth. This is when teeth move to make space for the dummy or thumb and so do not meet in the correct way when they bite together. The more frequently the baby or child uses the pacifier/ thumb and the longer (in terms of months/ years) it is used for, the greater the chance and severity of the problems. In the extreme it can lead to problems with speech development, such as a lisp or the inability to form certain sounds, and orthodontic problems which may require treatment when the child is older.
Having had parents in my clinic in despair over their child’s inability to stop thumb-sucking (sometimes children 6+ years old), my personal advice is never to encourage a child to suck their thumb and with babies actively try to remove the thumb from the mouth, even if it replaced by a pacifier. When the time is right a pacifier can be removed (even if it is to a chorus of screaming and crying), a thumb can’t!
Here are some sensible guidelines to follow to reduce the impact of problems caused by pacifiers-
– Limit their use as much as possible, ideally to only night time when the baby is actually going to sleep
– So-called ‘orthodontic’ pacifiers are designed to reduce the risk of problems. However, these are still not as good as no pacifier at all and shouldn’t be seen as a perfect solution.
– Never dip your baby’s pacifier or teething ring into fruit syrups, honey, alcohol, fruit juices or anything containing sugars, particularly at bedtime. The harmful sugars and acids can attack your baby’s newly formed teeth and cause decay.
– Break the habit as soon as you can (2- 3 years old at the latest). Throw the pacifiers away so you are not tempted to give in, and reward the child when they manage a night or period without it. It may be difficult for a few nights but it will be worth it in the long term.
– Do not allow a child who is old enough to talk, walk around with a pacifier his/ her mouth in the daytime
Good luck!
