Cooper's big accomplishment!

**warning- more details than you probably care to know in this post ;)**

In our crazy 48 hour house cleaning to prep it for showing, Adam found a poster board and was about to throw it away.   I put it to the side and decided it was a sign to start a No More Thumb Sucking campaign!  Cooper is the type of kid that will totally work for an incentive and loves a good chart…another reason he is like his mother ;).

Cooper has been sucking his right thumb since he was 4 months old.  We attribute his thumb sucking to his amazing sleep patterns throughout his short 4 years of life.  Seriously the kid is an incredible sleeper!  That thumb has always been there for him…to help soothe him to sleep, bring him comfort, a great tv watching companion, etc.  Before this we had talked to him about no longer sucking his thumb but hadn't truly worked on giving it up completely.  At this point, he was basically just sucking his thumb at nap/bedtime and whenever he had his blanket in his hand.  In fact, his teachers were unaware that he even sucked his thumb!  

 I knew the first step was to make it sound like lots of fun and get Cooper to be involved in all of it.  So I pulled out the fun, smelly markers…everything is better with smelly markers-you know that, right? ;) 

 He was all about it!  He name the chart, picked out all the colors, and wrote a bit.

We came up with the incentives together too!  He could earn 2 stickers a day.  One if he didn't suck his thumb from the time he woke up in the morning until nap.  Another sticker if didn't suck his thumb from the time he woke up from nap until bedtime.  Each day that he had earned 2 stickers, he could choose a piece of candy, hot chocolate or iPad time.  He almost always chose iPad.  At 5 days of no thumb sucking in a row, he got an ice cream date with mom or dad…we still haven't cashed this one in!  Then at 10 days in a row, he wanted to go to Target and get a Ninja Turtle jacket.  Done!

At this point we didn't even mention that he couldn't suck his thumb while he slept but he just assumed it.  I had bought this stuff and believe it was the key to Coop's quick success.  It is an awful, awful tasting liquid that you apply to the nail.  It's so awful that it lasts 2 days before you need to reapply!  I showed and explained it to Cooper.  I told hime that he didn't have to put it on his thumb but if he thought it would help, we could use it.  After smelling it he said, "no way!"  However, when we put him to bed the first night he said, "Mom, can you put that stuff on my thumb?"  Oh, sweet, sweet boy.  He knew he needed some back up ;).  About 10 minutes later he came out of his room needing a drink of water…yep, he had gave that thumb a try.  This happened a few other times over the course of a week, always at night or super early in the morning.  At times when he was asleep and it just happened by habit.  

 We could not be more proud of this boy!  He totally rocked this challenge!  Just like that he stopped his thumb sucking habit, no turning back!  10 straight days from day 1!  Seriously, it was easy!  I think we have told him 1 million times how proud we are of him and we truly are-it's not easy to break a habit you have been doing everyday for 4 years.   

His 10th day we went to Target for that Ninja Turtle jacket…well, they were sold out :(.  He was totally ok with it, he said, "That's alright Mom, we can go pick out a toy."  We were up and down and up and down those aisles, analyzing all the options.  He finally decided on this Octonaut toy, it's one of his fave shows right now.

He adores this new toy and I adore him!  His grandparents got him surprise toys as well so he is a pretty happy kid!  After the 10 days we stopped using the sticker chart and the Mavala as well.  Thankfully he hasn't reverted back at all.

We did have one side effect that I must note.   Well, we think it was a side effect.  About 2 weeks during/following the 'no more thumb sucking', we were having some major behavior issues with Cooper.  He was not listening (way more than normal ;), talking back, hitting me, did I mention not listening and talking back???  I was about to lose it, he was awful.  After a few days, we decided it must be 'thumb withdrawal!'  I mean, we took away his main source of comfort and something he had been doing for 4 years, everyday.  He did get better and is back to normal but it definitely took a while and an incredible amount of patience.  In fact, I decided during those couple weeks that I may not survive the teenage years. Yikes!

I have to admit a teeny tiny part of me was a teeny tiny bit sad about all of this.  This was one of the last little bits of his baby side that was left :(-he's growing up too fast!  Just another milestone in the books.

Cooper William, we are so proud of you! You are awesome and such an incredible boy!