If you have a child who currently or has ever sucked their thumb, you know it can be a very hard habit to break. Sucking your thumb is such a soothing and calming thing a child does that they often do it without even realizing it. Unfortunately, while it can seem sweet and adorable when a baby does it, as children grow older it can cause issues with a child's teeth and language development. One mom recently reached out looking for advice on how to stop her 12-year-old from sucking their thumb that you may or may not agree with.

A concerned mother recently wrote into Slate's Care and Feeding column asking for advice regarding her 12-year-old son's thumb-sucking habit. "My son is a thumb sucker—which isn’t the end of the world, except that he’s almost 12," she begins her letter. "Yes, we should have dealt with it earlier, yes to all the things we should have done instead of thinking he’d grow out of it (or peer pressure would end it)." She adds that she sucked her fingers as a child so it's not that she's not sympathetic, "but at some age, I think it’s not unreasonable to have at least some concern. I don’t think it’s a matter of self-soothing anymore so much as it’s become a reflex. My husband is a lecturer, which isn’t helping and just upsets my kid. I vacillate between lecturing, telling him to stop when he’s doing it and trying to reason with him about why he needs to try to stop."

She added that they've tried a number of different remedies to help him to stop, but they don't seem to be working. What makes it worse is that he doesn't just suck his thumb at home, but he's also doing it at school. "Frankly I’m worried this will stunt his interaction with other kids, and he’ll end up getting bullied. He’s doing it at school, and a lot of adults have brought it to my attention. To the extent that a school administrator mocked him for it. She received my scolding that day, but it does make it stand out. He’s also just too old to do this and needs to find other coping mechanisms (if it is a self-soothing thing at times)."

Nicole Cliffe, who doles out the advice in this column, first assures this mom that she doesn't need to feel guilty about her son's thumb-sucking habit. "We all assume kids will grow out of stuff like this. Your doctor tells you they’ll grow out of stuff like this. Don’t beat yourself up." She then tells the concerned mother that since puberty is just around the corner there will be a "whole new and exciting set of things to … do with his hands, and this is finally going to actually “take care of itself.”"

Cliffe suggests stopping all the conversation about it for the time being and simply leaving the boy alone. "If he starts getting social blowback, or someone he’s romantically interested in says something, he’ll stop." Or maybe he won't, as Cliffe adds, but she reassures this mother that she has personally done all she can. Kids grow out of things at different times, and the advice here is that sooner rather than later this tween will also grow out of this habit.

What do you think of this advice? Do you think the mom and dad should simply ignore it and hope their son grows out of it or do you think they need to take more extreme measures?

Read Next: How Do I Stop My Toddler From Sucking Their Thumb?