Saturday, April 7, 2012

Calling all parents of hand mouthers!

I'm typing from my phone while enjoying an outdoor breeze with Daniel, so please forgive typos.

Daniel mouths his hands so much that he whips his saliva into a frothy mess (sorry if the visual is too much!) I have tried splints, but I feel like it's denying him sensory input that he obviously craves. I bought "spiky hands", which are rubber things that cover his hands and give him something else to mess with that protects his hands from the chafing.

Do any of you have other suggestions? It's difficult to be out and about in public when he's doing this, plus it's not good for his hands.

Help!

2 comments:

Phil Dzialo said...

Carolyn, of course, Adam is not a hand mouther but he had frothy, dripping saliva like no other person I know. Don't have a solution and am not into adversives, but I know that when my daughter was a child she lived with a thumb in her mouth forever, probably till she was 20 (thank god, she doesn't read blogs). Any way there are products for nail biting, finger sucking, etc. which are noxious to the taste but harmless...I guess the theory is that if it tastes like crap (not literally), you'll keep hands out of the mouth. One such product is on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Mavala-Stop-Biting-Sucking-0-3-Fluid/dp/B0000YUXI0
I probably don't know what I talking about, but stuck in Montreal, so I'm playing on the computer and giving meaningless advice. If this is idiotic, please feel free to delete...I won't be offended.

Carolyn said...

Thanks for the link, Phil. I am going to check with my online communities and see if anyone has tried it. I just can't see this continuing much longer. His fingers get sore and he has a small open area now on top of one of them.

Have fun in Montreal!