The Mouthing Stage

Are you familiar with the stage when they put everything in their mouths? Its’ so cute how they’re crawling along and they see a cute little toy and they just pop it in their cute little mouths and they gum it to death with their cute little gums. It’s all so natural and normal. They do this for some months and then they get more mobile and more things get into their mouths. And if you’re a germ-aphobe, you notice what goes in but it’s so normal now to see him chew a shoe that you really don’t think twice about it until someone (who is a germ-aphobe or who hasn’t raised kids (you know, the “clean people”)) comments. At which point, you point it out of reach until they leave. Really. Shoes. As I look back on it, I know that shoes are gross but at the very moment that he was chewing the shoe, I know I could have thought of 3 things (at least) that he had his mouth on that day that were more disgusting. So it’s all where you’re coming from.

Anyway, you know the stage – mouthing. It usually lasts until their teeth come in and they’re walking around so there’s more to distract them and you can tell them to take whatever it is out of their mouths. Well, surprise, surprise, this wasn’t Boe. He started mouthing at the usual age and hasn’t stopped. He’s 2.5 now and oral fixation is his life.
He tastes and chews on everything! He had his mouth on a metal table leg at a park the other day. Yeah, I look down, mid-conversation, and there’s Boe on all fours trying to put his mouth on the table leg!! I used to be a little embarrassed having to tell him “stop licking the pole” or “don’t put your mouth on the floor” – yeah, floor. If something is stuck to the ground (like gum!), he’ll lay on the ground to put his mouth on it!! Most kids would never notice a speck of something on the ground while they are at the playscape, but Boe does! But, now, those commands are so common place that embarrassment is no longer a part of the equation.

So, we have chewing rules. In public, everything is off limits. At home, there are things that he can chew on. If we’re outside at our house, there is a variety of chewables – mostly what people in old western cowboy movies chew on – grass, etc. And I don’t have time to have flower beds so we’re not talking about any of those horribly toxic houseplants that you hear about that all these grandmas have growing in and around their home that if a small child or pet gets a hold of them, its life threatening. No, this is just stuff that grows wild and I’ve checked it all out. I had to. When all these bushes that fill our woods began to seed and produce berries, I was on the internet researching like crazy. It was in vain b/c, believe it or not, he has no interest in wild tree berries.

But inside our house there was a ton of toxicity. I’m not talking cleaners and such. I’m talking about his toys. Most of them are plastic and plastic really shouldn’t be chewed on. When I realized that his chewing stage wasn’t going away, I got his teethers back out. And we created the you-can-only-chew-on-your-teethers rule. I started thinking about all those toys he was chewing on. His toys were for ages 2+ and I don’t think that the industry expects 2+ to chew on their toys. So I thought that maybe these toys weren’t so safe to mouth. And I also began to wonder how safe his teethers were. It was about this time that I learned of a book called Smart Mama’s Green Guide by Jennifer Taggart. I ordered it and read through it in about 2 days. This is what I learned in relation to our teether issue. The restrictions are put on for a limited chewing time per day or something. Like 3 minutes. Boe gnaws on whatever while he’s watching his a.m. TV show – so anywhere from 15-30 minutes. And that’s just the sitting and chewing time. That doesn’t include the pop-it-in-his-mouth-during-playtime chewing time. So we were surpassing the allowed-by-law chewing time by a lot!!! Which meant, there was no telling how much plastic toxic stuff he was ingesting. So here I go – more research. This time into the world of safe chewables. And as with most of my research, I learn that we are not alone. There is a whole industry devoted to non-toxic-chewable things for all ages. You know the kids who chew on straws or pencils or whatever? This industry is for them (or us). So I bought a few completely non-toxic (no matter how long they’re chewed on) teethers to last us until he outgrows this – if he ever does. I’ll probably end up buying those pencil toppers one day.

I won’t even get into another issue that I discovered during this research episode (PICA). I’ll save that for another post.