At the end of this three-day weekend Scarlett, our firecracker, will turn four. She’ll go to sleep on Monday night, nestled with her four loveys and her pacifier in her mouth, her cupcake blanket pulled up to her chin. On her nightstand, a pile of extra pacis.
The following day, we’ll expel the pacifiers from our house and move on with our lives, and we don’t yet know how long the recovery period will be. (Neither have we chosen a method or myth with which to address this experience. Send them to “another baby”? Let the Binky Fairy
Now here’s where I defend my (and Katie Holmes’) choice to let a girl so big suck on an artificial nipple.
We took away our first-born’s pacifier on his third birthday. He never napped again.
Every day for months, three-year old Julian was exhausted around 2 pm. By three o’clock, he was out of his mind, rolling on the floor. But he could not fall asleep. By about 5 pm, he’d turn back into his normal self, if there is such a thing for preschoolers. But it really seemed like he needed that nap, and just couldn’t do it without his trusted pacifier.
So when Scarlett, turned three, still napped faithfully and eagerly every day, we decided we’d give her another year. We felt like the benefits of napping were more important than controlling the pacifier situation.
That coveted object of babies and toddlers is still amazing to me. My friend Julie calls it “a glass of wine” for babies. Both of my children demonstrated clear visible transformations when they closed their lips around that nipple. Instant relaxation and contentment.
Scarlett actually told me last week that her loveys don’t feel soft when her paci is not in her mouth; they feel “scrubby”. Insert the paci and – voila – rubbalicious security blankets. This information was presented to me in defense when I proposed that next month she would give up her precious binkies, but could keep her soft nighttime companions. It was almost as if she was saying “Don’t bother with the consolation prizes.”
I know we might lose the naps next week, but she doesn’t need it so much anymore, and ditching daytime sleep will likely make bedtime run more smoothly. (Plus Heather’s four- and six-year olds STILL NAP and haven’t had the assistance of pacifiers for years, so I know it’s not always related.)
Wish me luck! How did you wean your child from the pacifier?
We had a ridiculous “happy goodbye” ceremony and said goodbye to all the pacifiers in the house. Most went in the trash but one special one went in a box for the ceremony. I don’t remember a toy being offered in exchange.
Now, we were able to blame the dentist as the reason for giving them up so that helped. But I would also like to fault the dentist for telling Milo that we would put it up on a high shelf for 12 weeks and if he still wanted it, he could have it back. Though the transition for sleep was only 2-4 days/nights, I swear he was keeping track of his time until paci return like a prisoner waiting for parole. Brutal. Luckily, after about 10 weeks of waiting, he finally gave up.
All that being said — and yes, my kids still nap — we have two dusty boxes on the highest bookshelf in our living room in case of pacifier emergency.
I read there’s a window where you can take them away and replace with another object so that’s what we did. We had them put them in the trash (age 2 maybe) and pick out new loveys at Target. Totally worked.
I think the best thing is to breastfeed and never start the pacifier to nap/sleep routine. My baby is 3 months old and I only use the pacifier if we are in public and I need him to simmer down.
My son was a few months past three and we accidentally (a real accident, not a manufactured one, I swear) forgot to bring his Nuks on a trip–it was 4th of July weekend, in fact!
Whenever he asked for them we just said “remember we left them in the car at the airport?” and he accepted it. He slept fine–maybe the fact that we weren’t at home actually helped?
Then when we did get home, oopsie, somehow the Nuks were gone from the car, and he managed quite well. Good luck!
We took them away on the third birthday “to give to babies” and picked out a new big kid toy. My daughter fussed for a couple of days and then started sucking her thumb instead. Not sure how we’re going to get rid of that!
Liz’s daughter packed them up and “sent” them to my then baby Margot, who really needed them more than she did. Babies *need* binkies, didn’t you know?
Worked like a charm!
Good for you – on all of it. “The Rules” are so arbitrary and yet they are protected like they are life and death 100% accurate scientific fact – never to allow deviation. Kids are different, so are their needs.
My kids (4 and 7) still suck their thumbs. Not likely to get rid of their thumbs any time soon, so they will have to either 1) decide on their own to stop or 2) be required, forcibly, to stop by me or an orthodontist. I have no plans to stop them – maybe to stop them in a particular time/place if it’s not appropriate – but I think it brings them comfort and it’s not a big deal. As my dad likes to say, “they’re not likely to walk down the aisle sucking their thumbs (or not potty-trained, or insert worrisome behavior here).”
Only one of my six took a paci, most just used me as their paci (EBF, lol!). But when her front teeth started shifting a bit we decided to move on from paci-land. I think transitions are exceptionally hard on little people (not too easy on adults, either, right?) so I like to ease the way through. We began ‘losing’ the paci at increasing intervals and ‘forgetting’ it at home here and there, and we’d partner up (kept us on the same team!) to search for it, but never could find the darn thing, lol. Over just a couple of weeks, the paci was down to sleepytime alone, then it just got ‘lost’ entirely, so I’d lay down with my little one and rub her back til she fell asleep. She was happy to replace the paci with mama’s back rubs!
Um… he weaned himself of the paci… by switching to his thumb. And as I point out to anyone who thinks THAT is an issue “I sucked my thumb til I was 5 or 6 – and I turned out fine.” What are they going to do, argue that I didn’t?
My situation is similar to Jami’s. My kids never took to the pacis in the first place, but I’m not one to judge pacifier use, because my kids are finger suckers! And I wouldn’t even attempt to get them to stop b/c it would be so futile. We limit it to sleepy-time situations, but other than that, I’m just putting out a savings jar for orthodontia and thanking my lucky stars that they sleep well.
Good luck to you!
Love hearing all these stories! I predict there will be some whining for 2-3 days but that she’ll lose her taste for it. Oh, I just realized that if we time it right after her birthday, she’ll be with her grandparents camping, so that could be a good distraction.
Thanks for this! I sometimes feel like the last Mom in the world to have a toddler with a binky and no real plans to ditch it soon. I don’t have any advice, but good luck with the transition.
We ditched it at 7 months and my son never noticed. I knew his need to suck was declining.
The “window” is before 9 months. After that, babies are more likely to notice and miss something that is part of their routine.
I breastfed but had a kid with ridiculous “sucking” issues. She still has an oral fixation problem (hands go in mouth when nervous/anxious). We gave it up a couple of years ago (I think) between 2 & 3 when a friend had a baby. Seemed like a good time to do it. We got a replacement stuffie, but I don’t think that would have mattered. Daycare made her give it up for naps when she was 15-18 months old, but bedtime was the real hard part. She still takes an hour or so to settle down.
The new baby while she is a slow nurser and loves to suck, does not seem to have the same oral issue. Hasn’t taken a pacifier yet (unless you could my raw nipples). Part of me hopes ultimately she does because with daycare it is nice for them to have an option other than feeding her. With her reflux she can’t lay down right after she eats so having another way to fall asleep is a good thing.
We simply threw them out. Told the twins at 2 that they were too old for them and threw them away (at Pedi’s advice. Do not keep them or you will root through the trash). Naptime that day was ROUGH. Bedtime was difficult. After 3 days they never noticed. If I knew it was going to be that easy I would have done it earlier. Honestly I think I got lucky!
My daughter is 20 months and I’m dreading the whole give up the paci thing. (my son was a breeze at 6 months but he needed his bunny not the paci). I tried getting rid of it before but then at 18 months she learned to climb out of her crib and bedtime has been a DISASTER since the toddler bed transition
. Plus I still haven’t managed to completely get rid of bottles yet. I’m limiting them to bed and nap time (most of the time she doesn’t even need one at nap). Figure once I finally get rid of the bottles completely, then I’ll think about the pacifier which she uses to go to sleep, when she gets hurt, tired, grumpy, or I’m guilty of popping it in her mouth out in public because she is a wicked mouther and it keeps her from putting things she finds in her mouth. Gonna be a challenge!
My daughter only uses her binkie for naps. She sleeps fine through the night without one. When I started to wean her from it at nap time…no nap. Sometimes I’d wait a 1/2 hour and then give it her and instant sleep. So now I skip the wait time and she takes it for a nap. The nap is more important to me and I already know she’ll need braces. I figure when she stops napping, she’ll stop binkie use. (PS: never allowed to use it anywhere but in her bed during nap, and she doesn’t). GOOD LUCK!
we said goodbye binkie at 18 months (after an unsuccessful time of trying to toss them at 12 months).
We had a little talk one day that went something like “you don’t need the binkie anymore, and momma can’t understand what you are saying”… and that was that.
when he was about 20 months I was taking his temperature with the pacifier style thermometer and he said “I don’t want the binkie!” – i couldn’t help but chuckle…and begged him to put the binkie in his mouth so i could check his temp!
my feelings are naps are important…and if a binkie is needed in order to nap, so be it! My boy is going strong with naps at 2.5yrs now… i remember taking naps at 6years old.
when our oldest (now 8) was around 2 he got sick in the middle of the night. He had been sucking on his “bink” when it happened and (on his own) he decided that the “binky” apparently was to blame. DH and I jumped on board immediately. Agreeing and supporting his idea seemed the prefect plan … the next day he asked once or twice about his “bink” but I reminded him what he told us and it worked
My daughter was obsessed with her many binkies. Once she turned two I stopped buying them when we would lose them. One night when she was about 2 years/3 months we couldn’t find any binkies at bedtime. We decided to go with it, and that was the end of binkies in our house. The first few nights were a little rough, but she only asked for the binkies few times. Really, could have been so much worse!
I weaned my son from the pasi right after he turned one. At that point he only had it to go to sleep. We weaned from naptime first and then bed time. It took about 3 days and he was good. About 2 months later I went on a roadtrip with my friend and brought it with me just in case. We were having a rough nite so I tried to give it to him and he didn’t even know what to do with it. Never tried again after that.
Our son started sucking DH’s pinkie when he was just a couple of days old and would fall right to sleep. So we started with pacifiers at 2 weeks. I think most of that first year of pictures he has a paci in his mouth! He had it till about 2 1/2 and then I stopped buying new ones and explained to him when the last one dies there will be no more. By that time he would usually hold one and rub it between his fingers and then suck a second. The mouth one would promptly fall out once he was sound asleep and he wouldn’t wake up till morning. He had no issues when the last one finally died. No problems falling asleep, or not napping or going to bed. I thought it would be a major issue as he had done it for so long, but he was so unaffected by the loss. We didn’t replace it with anything, nor did he replace it with his finger.
The binky – something that parents rush to find at 1st sign of a cranky baby (I’m guilty of it), but when it is time to loose it boy the problems it brings. My 1st daughter slowly wheened herself from it before she even turned 1. My 2nd daughter LOVED her binky and could not go to sleep without it, and such a soother when she wasn’t feeling all that great. We had to get rid of it when she turned 1 due to her teeth shifting a little. We got rid of the binky clips so it wasn’t hanging on her all the time and slowly offered it less and less and it took longer and longer to find it when it got “lost”. I have to admit that I saved one in a drawer as a momento and one in my winter coat pocket as an emergency “back up” when nothing else worked. Now about walking down the aisle sucking a thumb…… I did (blush) but gave it up as soon as DH started teasing me about it. I don’t know what it was even in my old age it helped with anxiety. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that my mother left me under the care of my grandma so she could finish her studies and then at around 8 months when she was done getting her nursing degree she took me back since it was a temperary situation. Anyways my teeth were always perfectly straight and always got compliments and was always asked if I wore braces as a child becuase my teeth were so straight. The thumb didn’t shift my teeth but my wisdom teeth sure did. LOL Good luck to you all on your binky and thumb adventures. I know I stressed a great deal when I was forced to take my baby’s binky away.
I haven’t had the personal pleasure of this experience yet, but i can tell you what my parents did for my little brother to get him to stop sucking his thumb (it was, in this case, actually causing dental damage as well as damage to his thumb); it worked like a charm, too!
My dad told my brother that once you reach a certain age, you get too old to suck your thumb and that if he kept sucking his thumb, it would turn black and fall off. My brother just kept on sucking. So my dad went in one night and coloured his thumb with permanent marker. My brother awoke and freaked out. My parents reassured him that everything would be fine as long as he stopped sucking…and he did. After that, he never had a problem with it.
I suppose some parents might be against ‘scare tactics’. But I understand my parents’ motivation. They HAD to get him to stop sucking his thumb and really had no other choices, having tried everything else. I suppose this same concept could be adapted to wean kids off of pacifiers. ;P
My first was a SUCKER. I mean, this girl was insatiable. Made her a great breastfeeder, but it also meant she would take ANY bink and any time and pitch a giant fit when she had to take one out. She started to have a HUGE gap in her front two teeth and 25 months, after 2 weeks of unsuccessful attempts at paying for toys with the binks (she’s scream until she threw up when it was naptime/bedtime if she didn’t get one, so we’d give her one back) we finally gave up and took them away for good. It was like she knew they weren’t in the house, honestly. We had a good week of naptimes that came when she was too tired to fight it any more and bedtimes that consisted of her crying herself to sleep, but after a week they were gone and she hasn’t put one in since. Little sis barely took a bink (wouldn’t accept ANY kind besides the Playtex original binky) and I was so thankful that we could say “no those are sissy’s binks” and my first accepted it. We never had a Playtex one in the house when #1 used them regularly. Just an FYI, the gap has really closed up in the past 4 months…barely noticeable. Our dentist was horrified we’d let her have binks past 12 months, but said the window to get rid of them was before 9 months also. I think we’d have had luck doing it before 18 months, to be honest, and it would have been less painful. I can’t imagine going to 4 …we’d have had WWIII in our house!!
Paying for a Tangled doll and swimsuit did work for like 2 days in the middle of that 2 weeks….just a thought!
oh my, I wish I would have known this when we weaned our son last week. since then, he has turned into a terror and will not nap and he now comes out repeatedly at bedtime. so wish we had just waited until he was a little older. he will be three next week. wish I could rewind and give the things back to him, I really do.
I feel pretty lucky that my 8 month old never really cared for one. He had the hospital one for a couple months but it really felt more like it kept him from falling asleep (if it fell out) than it helped him go to sleep. So he never had one after four months old. That said, he was swaddled until almost 6 months (and still in a sleep sack until two weeks ago… he liked to tug on the material, almost like a blankey) and still has a humidifier/noise machine in his room. So… we aren’t without our crutches. They just don’t happen to be pacifiers! And now they are limited to just the humidifier. Which DOES make traveling easy… just have a pack n play and a noise machine and he’s good to go just about anywhere! YAY.
Shortly before his 3rd birthday, we poked a small hole in his pacifiers to reduce the suction. I increased the size of the hole every couple of days until, after two weeks or so, the pacifiers were completely unsatisfying to suck on and he gave them up voluntarily. I feel a little guilty because this was my first (and so far only) major parental deception — we told him they “wore out” because he had been using them since he was a baby and now he was getting too old. Luckily he didn’t say, “Then why don’t we buy new ones?”
I got ridiculously lucky that my kid used a pacifier for about 4 months. When he was about 5 months old he decided they were clearly a inferior substitute for what he really wanted (ahem, he wanted to nurse).
He’s only 19 months now and we’re still breastfeeding, and I have no idea how we’re going to wean from that. At least you can throw away all the pacifiers.
@Kaitlin – my mom’s aunt did something similar to her cousin D. D is a twin, and so her mom figured if she only had to deal with one crying at a time, there were worse things D could do to soothe herself. Eventually, she just painted D’s thumb green while sleeping. D was so horrified that when her mom told her it was green because she was sucking her thumb, she quit almost immediately!
We encouraged the thumb over the binky – less to wash or worry about losing. His teeth are fine (so far) but I was already figuring he’d need braces/headgear (both I and my hubby did…).
We had the trash man leave a a special surprise as a thank you for giving him the pacifiers to pass along to the babies. At 2 we decided to have the pacifier only for bedtime and nap time and then at 3 we said goodbye.
For my second son though, I hit a tough spot with the pacifier around 4 months where he woke every time it fell out of his mouth. So I took it away. It was horrible. He has been my most difficult sleeper, my most challenging to comfort and my most prone to tantrums.
So, with my third I have been determined to keep that thing around for a long time. I like the way we did it with our oldest, it worked for him.
This is one of those things that I just don’t understand why people feel so passionately sometimes about taking these comfort objects away early. It seems you have to weigh your own child’s needs, the needs of your family and the reality check that you aren’t doing anything just because you feel like other people think you need to get rid of it…they probably won’t be going off to high school with it. Probably.
Good luck Whitney!
We haven’t done this yet, but what my mom did for my brother is tell him that pacifiers had to stay in bed. For a while, my brother would run into his room, suck on the pacifier, then go back to what he was doing. After a while, he was so busy, he forgot he even thought he needed it, and my mom just made it disappear.
My daughter was a paci at nap and bed only girl, so we didn’t have TOO much of a battle when we gave it up at 3 1/2. She had just recently gotten very interested in the whole princess thing (I put THAT off as long as possible) and I made her a deal:
“You make it 2 weeks without a pacifier, and you can pick out whatever princess dress you want. But once you get the dress, we say goodbye to the pa-pa’s for good.”
It made it feel a little less final when she had to give them up, and it gave us something to talk about and look forward to when she DID ask about the pacifier. She never pushed to get them back, but she asked about them a few times and shed a few tears.
I simply don’t get all the fuss and attention around this issue. At the end of the day, you’re the mom and you know what’s best for your child. It’s really not anyone else’s business. My daughter was around 3 years, 8 months when we took the paci away. But she had expressed interest in doing so. I had no interest in taking it away until she seemed ready. It was so comforting to her ~ and I knew she wasn’t going to go away to college with it. But it always seemed that EVERYONE had something to say about it. I had to get nasty with people on several occasions. So thanks for expressing your feelings on this….
I was SUPER lucky with both my kids. My son used his paci for about six months and then we just stopped giving it to him and he was never fussy about it. My daughter used it for about three or four months, then she started chewing on it and taking it out of her mouth to play with it. After that we used it as another toy that she would sometimes bite on, but wouldn’t use to suck on or comfort her in any way.
That said, I had a friend who cut holes into her son’s paci and that did the trip. He couldn’t really suck on them so he ended up just giving them up.
My first was a majorly colicky baby so even though he didn’t want it at first we pushed the paci until he ended up taking it– and then when it was time to go, at 19 months or so (I became preggo again and didn’t want two with Nukkies! I wanted him to forget he had it before the next came along) I just cut off the nipple of one of them and let him play with it a bit. He wasn’t happy but he got over it fairly quickly. He wasn’t really taking naps anyway.
My second two came really close together and the middle child, while she gave up the NUK easily, kept stealing it from her sister after she was born. After a trip to the dentist, I noticed they had an open bite! They would close their teeth but their front teeth would not close. I chucked them that week; I had kept putting it off b/c of teething and traveling, etc. It really wasn’t a fuss at all, for both of them, I was shocked.
I am not looking forward to this. I wanted it to never exist and at 3weeks or so, gave in and gave one to her. I wanted it gone at 3 months, 6 months…. she’s 9 months and it’s still here. Maybe at a year? I hate the pacifier. But I really cannot deny that my kiddo is soothed by it in a way that I cannot replicate no matter how hard I try.
Good luck!
oh.. and she will fall asleep in the car without it.. and she’s not a ‘car sleeper’. The kid completely refused to nap on our 12 hour car trip last week. She was SO overtired. but anyways, if it’s almost naptime and she’s in the car on a normal day, she will fall asleep even if the pacifier is not around. So, maybe try a car ride if you get desperate.
Shy of his 4th b-day by a few months, our Boris had a fall that injured his lip, and made binky use painful so he would not ask for it, anymore. As a result, he no longer naps, stays up 14 hours straight and I can see that once calm, happy and peaceful child is now struggling in several ways, due to having lost the most important object that soothes him and subsequently is sleep deprived. We are on day 10 since the accident, and once his lip fully heals and if I see no improvement after another week or so in my child’s adjustment , I know that Binky may have to make a come-back. In fact, I’ll throw that Binky a welcome-back party, like no other…
Howabout just talking to the child about how to settle their emotions themselves without plugging their faces? I find extended pacifier use to be for lazy parents. It’s side-stepping a problem. Yeah, it’s soothing for many children. But it’s a crutch. I was a finger-sucker until probably age 7-8, but it wasn’t a positive thing, looking back on it. It’s a baby/toddler’s equivalent to smoking a cigarette. It’s a habit they get dependent on and can’t function without that oral fixation. Not to mention it looks plain awful. I’m sorry but your daughter is much cuter without that plug in her mouth.