Suction reflex in the newborn: what is it and what is it for?
The sucking reflex in the newborn is one of the primary reflexes. Just lightly touch the corner of his mouth with a finger for him to turn immediately with his mouth open, ready to suck on any object he is in front of: a finger, the mother's breast, a bottle, a pacifier.
Science has shown us that the sucking reflex is present even before birth, when the baby is still in the mother's womb: in ultrasound scans you can see him practicing sucking with amniotic fluid, or sucking his thumb.
The sucking reflex, however, is the subject of several controversies. There are those who say, in fact, that continuous sucking can lead the newborn to linguistic delays or physical problems and end up raging against the alleged bad habit of offering him a pacifier ... But is it really such a serious problem? Let's try to clarify the matter, but in the meantime, here is a video that will help you take the pacifier off your baby:
When can the sucking reflex in infants become a bad habit?
Some stomatologists and speech therapists state that sucking the thumb or pacifier for the sucking reflex can create problems with the baby's teeth, with projection of the upper incisors forward and retropulsion of the lower incisors backwards.
This alleged problem of dental arch development, however, has never been scientifically proven and remains an open debate among experts. The most accredited hypothesis is that it can actually cause damage only if the suction takes place at an advanced age, that is at the age of six, when the child is already at the second teething.
The sucking reflex in the newborn: how to support it?
The question of whether or not it is appropriate to indulge the infant's sucking reflex finds its greatest subject of debate in the "age-old question: yes or no to the pacifier? To better understand the question, it will be necessary to start from the beginning.
The sucking reflex has existed since man was born, but primitive societies had nothing like our pacifier: babies lived constantly attached to the mother's body and sucked at her breast whenever they felt like it, not necessarily only. out of hunger.
Modernity then invented the pacifier precisely to respond to this innate reflex of the child: a surrogate was needed for the mother's breast and so the pacifier was born to make it suck and the bottle to make it eat. Only towards the end of the nineteenth century did the child's habit of sucking his thumb begin to be demonized: it was seen as unseemly and harmful, causing all kinds of problems, from posture to intestinal ones.
Today the pacifier remains the subject of controversy, but in the end most parents give it to their child, despite widespread distrust. For some psychologists this mistrust would arise from the unconscious desire to forbid a child from a solitary pleasure, a secret pleasure that is granted without their authorization.
For other parents, however, the problem is "aesthetics: it does not" seem nice "to see a child sucking his finger or sucking a pacifier or a piece of cloth. However, the baby's sucking reflex is a primary need and it cannot be judged with this kind of criterion.
Suction and pacifier reflex: let's be clear
So let's try to get a clear picture of the baby's sucking reflex and how good or bad it is to support it. Defining sucking as a bad habit is not correct from a scientific point of view, because there is no evidence that it is, indeed! Precisely because the sucking reflex is a natural instinct it should be supported in the newborn and not repressed. In time, it will disappear entirely, but it will do it on its own!
The important thing is not to offer a pacifier to the baby just to make him feel good. If you give it to him only when he actually feels the need to suck, the reflex will disappear by itself as soon as your baby has developed the necessary psychophysical conditions. Of course, yes. he will be able (and will have to) help in this process, stopping giving it to him spontaneously and making him responsible.
When he has the ability to understand it, you can convince him that he is now big for the pacifier and that maybe you can give it to a small child who needs it more than him ... Making him feel important and now grown up will help him to detach himself from this object when the time is right, but until then let him indulge in the pleasure of sucking to satisfy his primary reflex.
