Breast feeding as a protection factor to avoid non-nutritive sucking habits

Purpose: evaluate association between social and demographic variables, breastfeeding interruption and deleterious oral habits and the prevalence of non-nutritive sucking habits in 03 to 05 years old school children in Vitória, Espírito Santo.Method: this is a retrospective longitudinal study with a final random sample of 903 children from a universe of 9.829 students. The comparison between predictive variables and non-nutritive sucking habits used Fisher Exact test and strength of association verified by Odds Ratio.Results: 12,4% of the children present or had presented finger sucking habit and 37,7% of sucking pacifier. There was no statistically significant association between finger sucking with weaning. Female children had 20% more chance to have habit of sucking pacifier (p=0,000). Children that had early breast feeding interruption presented approximately 4 times more chance of developing the habit of sucking pacifiers (p= 0.000).Conclusions: the association of pacifier sucking habit and weaning was verified. Early weaning can be considered a risk factor for maintenance of pacifiers sucking habit.