TGuard AeroFinger Reviews
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The T guard surely change the game in my child’s thumb sucking. It greatly reduced his sucking and he has eventually stopped the habit.
While the bracelet were colorful, he soon learnt how to manoeuvre it but nonetheless the T guard was wonderful and broke the habit. -
My 4.5 year old has sucked her fingers all her life, night and day. During Covid, that became a serious health issue. I’ve been trying to break her habit for well over a year. After trying every other suggested trick, I bought these, very pricy when you live in Canada. We are 6 weeks into our journey and here are my thoughts:
1) product works but kids are smart and can escape them (I had to tape them onto her hands so she couldn’t skip her fingers out).
2) the thin wrist bands for securing the guards cut into my kids’ wrists and required padding under to avoid sores. Also rubs between fingers and creates sores so bandaids were needed there
3) kids are resilient. Mine has had no trouble living life normally with these guards on both hands 24/7.
This has been the only product/method with ANY success for us. Now my daughter takes them off during the day (while supervised) and then wears them at night. It’s been a life saver, but not easy. Will be worth it in the end. -
This worked better than anything else we tried to get my daughter to stop sucking her fingers. Overall it took around 3-4 months. She kicked the daytime habit sooner but it was harder for her to stop at night in her sleep. The only thing I didn’t like was that the wrist bands cut into her hand at night. We fixed this by using tied ribbons instead. She was disciplined enough not to untie them. Overall I am glad we bought this, it was the only thing that finally broke her habit.
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Following the directions and being consistent was key! This was the only thing that helped break our daughter’s finger sucking habit!
This product worked. It took longer than expected, but it worked. Our daughter is almost three years old, and was a MAJOR thumb addict. Friends of ours used the bitter tasting nail polish with mixed results, and we heard a lot of horror stories of kids having meltdowns over it. What we did, which I super recommend, was we showed her pictures of the Tguard and talked to her about it and got her excited about it, so when we finally got it and put it on her, she felt proud of it because it made her feel like a big girl. She never once complained about it, though I will say the first few days without thumb sucking were quite hard for her emotionally, and car rides especially became very… stressful.
Giving 4 stars instead of 5 for a few reasons:
1.) It took two months for her to finally kick the habit. Fortunately, after week one she was totally fine wearing it, and didn’t seem to mind or even notice.
2.) Though she wasn’t able to take the Tguard off entirely, she was indeed able to get her thumb out of it, even if it was on quite snugly, and she would suck her thumb at night and nap-time. She was very sneaky about it, and we didn’t know she was doing this for about two weeks. It put her hand in an awkward position, so I think she eventually gave up on it since it wasn’t comfortable to suck her thumb that way, and also once we realized she was doing this, we put the bitter polish on her thumb as a further deterrent.
3.) The band and the Tguard rubbed her skin and gave her a couple blisters, and so we had to use bandages on them for about a week until those went away, and then we loosened up the Tguard quite a bit. She eventually developed some calluses in those spots and didn’t have anymore issues.
4.) The colors of the bands aren’t great. The green is actually pretty ugly, and our daughter wouldn’t even wear the those ones. Also, there are two shades of pink – like a magenta and a lighter pink. I think they should have more options for color palates – primary colors would be way cuter, and there could be other options like a pink & earth tone palate. We don’t care at all about adhering to the gender binary color norms, but for folks that do, I would imagine that having two pink tones for a boy might be frustrating. Extra bands are pretty expensive, and sometimes you need to use more than one in a day if you need to clean off something sticky or you clipped the wrong hole and made it too loose or tight… not to mention that she wouldn’t even wear the green ones… AND we had to go for a whole extra month, so we had to order two more packs of bands to get through it.
Ultimately, despite these drawbacks, I can’t imagine anything that could have worked better than the Tguard. Even our pediatrician noted it approvingly when we went took our daughter in for a checkup. I’ve already recommended it to a friend who’s trying to navigate his toddler’s thumb-sucking as well.
I was skeptical at first, but as soon as I got my daughter, prepped and expecting it, and received the package, she was super excited about the sticker chart! I made sure to sit down together and plan it the reward for the end goal of 30 day without thumb sucking, (daughter is 5). For us, she did try to take it off, at first, I had to be a pausing mom, and let her just go through the Emotions and a bit of crying,and be lovingly stem about it. However after a few minutes and reminding about the sticker and goal chart, And less if distracting and cuddles from mom, she was getting used to it.
I did give my daughter a safe kids chewer in the meantime, because part of her thumb sucking is the oral fixation, soon, that helped tremendously in the first few days.
Currently, my daughter is thumb sucking free, and is she had the urge to sick her thumb, I showed her how to communicate that to me, so that I can nip it in the butt, and either offer cuddles, or to put the thumb guard on, she immediately says, No! and we talk/ work through why she feels like sucking her thumb. Thank you so much, my kindergartener feels confident!
Successful about the result!! At the middle of our time with it it got a little broken on a side but kept working and I can recommend it to anyone, really breaks the habit, GREAT PRODUCT.
Overall we are so happy that we found this product. It took our daughter about 3wks to break her thumb sucking habit. If the bracelets wasn’t tight enough she would remove her thumb. The only thing that we didn’t like was by tightening the bracelets it would cut into her skin. Luckily, the marks have went away. Just wish that some kind of cushion or something could be added to the back of the bracelets. For us there wasn’t any in between either the bracelet was to loose or either to tight. We have recommended this product to other parents as well.
The product worked. At first our 5 year old wore the glove all day, except for an hour or two before bed, because she was a vigorous thumb sucker at any and all times. It did take her about two and a half months of wearing a glove on each hand every day and multiple sticker charts but in the end it was a success. My only gripes are fairly insignificant. One, there need to be more stickers in the kit. The ratio of stickers to days on the chart and the number of bands you get do not all add up. You will run out of each at different times. My other complaint is that the glove started to split on the thumb area after about a month. The split was maybe a half inch long and didn’t go any further than that but I feel it’s worth noting that it happened. To be fair, my daughter is very active and the gloves were likely subjected to some abuse. Overall I love the product and would definitely recommend it to other parents struggling with thumb sucker.
The guard did ultimately work, but these things should only be sold in pairs. Our kid quickly switched to the other thumb after using a night or 2. Then it seemed like the habit persisted from nap time when she was away at day care. So overall it took about 5-6 months to break the habit, but maybe only a month after her day care started using gloves, etc to stop the sucking at nap time.
The thumb guards worked fantastically. However the bands that go around the wrist no matter how loose would cut into my daughter’s wrists. I ended up buying “dog tag” chain from Amazon to use instead. The plastic slits on the guard are flexible enough to allow the chain through. My kiddo was still unable to remove the guards.
It helped during night time to reduce the amount of time my child had his thumb in his mouth. We used it for several months even after he figure out a way to get his thumb out of the guard. In the end overnight he decided he didn’t want to suck his thumb longer when he got two stomach bugs in a row and we told him it was probably because of his habit. The product is high quality, and though it helped, it wasn’t a magic bullet.
Our 2 1/2 year old is a hard core thumb sucker. Yes the T-guard works. After 3 weeks she would not suck during the day when the guard was off. I still put it on at night, but now she has switched and sucks the other thumb. We purchased a 2nd thumb guard in hopes this would stop her nighttime sucking, but again she switched to sucking her finger.
Now we are looking at buying 2 of the finger guards. We are almost at the 60 day mark. I am a happy customer, we just have a very determined child.
4 stars
We received a follow up email from a TGuard representative after posting our original review. From the get go, the representative was very thoughtful and knowledgeable. Never perfunctory or dismissive. He even offered to do a consultation to consider all the facts about our situation and worked with us to try and address any misunderstandings or issues that we were experiencing. After the consultation and TGuard’s kind offer to replace the device that was outside of the warranty period, we will continue the regimen and see if we can overcome the initial challenges. At this point, we would like to replace our original review score with this one (from a 3 to a 4). And the only reason it’s not 5 stars is because we’re waiting for the 2nd attempt to be completed and achieve success.
This thumb guard really worked for my 18 month old son! The first night was rough because he goes to sleep while sucking his thumb but he adjusted real quick (within days). He would actually come up to me and give me his thumb when he saw me take it out his backpack. In addition, he started babbling more then he was before which I am super happy about. The only reason why I didn’t give this review 5 stars is because it fit him a little big.
This is an updated review. After my first review the company was in contact with me and when I sent pictures of what my child’s thumb gaurd looked like after my kid chewed it up, they were kind enough to send me a replacement. We still have to use a mitten when she’s feeling overly distressed, napping or in the car for longish rides, and keeping it clean is a challenge, but she isn’t chewing her gaurd anymore and she is more conscious about not sucking her thumb. We will see how things go when she starts school, because despite what the website says, she cannot use her hand properly to open things up or write so she will not be wearing it when she is in school. I think it is working though because she will often bring us her mitten and tell us she needs it on to remind herself not to suck her thumb and she will start to chew on her nails and then stop and berate herself and not chew again. As with all products it works better for some children but not others, if other options haven’t worked, try this one.