Comments on: Why my 4-year old has a paci

By: Caitlyn

Caitlyn — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 13:09:54 +0000

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.

By: Violetta Babich-Drew

Violetta Babich-Drew — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 05:39:15 +0000

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…

By: Emily

Emily — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 23:02:29 +0000

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.

By: Cheril

Cheril — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 04:40:43 +0000

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.

By: Elizabeth

Elizabeth — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 21:39:21 +0000

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.

By: Audrey

Audrey — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:15:26 +0000

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….

By: Kate

Kate — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 03:30:01 +0000

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.

By: Lauren

Lauren — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 01:25:57 +0000

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.

By: The Mommy Therapy

The Mommy Therapy — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 20:22:50 +0000

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!

By: NicoleT

NicoleT — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:29:11 +0000

@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…).

By: Liz @ Law Mama

Liz @ Law Mama — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 05:06:00 +0000

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.

By: CM

CM — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 02:08:25 +0000

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?”