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Check out the May 2012 issue: raw stories, shocking confessions, candid advice about motherhood—and more!
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A Great Way to Help Your Children Say Goodbye to Their Pacifier
August 16th, 2011
“She won’t walk down the aisle with a pacifier in her mouth.”
“Isn’t she a little too old to have that thing hanging out of her mouth?”
If there’s one thing we as parents can count on, it’s the copious amount of unsolicited advice we will get. Toilet training, sleeping, eating and pacifiers. I had three children who all used pacifiers as infants, as babies and as toddlers. They were potty-trained early, sleep-trained early and were off the bottle by 13 months. I let them have the pacifiers up until their third birthdays and I didn’t feel bad or guilty about it.
Leading up to the dreaded “get rid of the paci” day, I prepared my daughter Isabella for this, so it would come as no surprise when I took away her beloved “papi.” And in addition to preparing her by talking about turning three and being a “big girl” like her big sister, I turned it into a game.
I told her that on her third birthday, she would get to send her pacifiers to the television character of her choice and that he or she would be extra proud of her. She thought about this for days and then finally made her decision. She wanted to send them to Elijah Wood (Yes, that Elijah Wood) who was her absolute favourite celebrity cameo on her favourite television show, Yo Gabba Gabba. On her birthday, we pulled out a padded envelope. She coloured a picture and we wrote a note. We put the pacifiers inside, sealed it up and addressed it together. And then we put it in the mail.
At bedtime that night, she was a little unhappy. It took her a long time to fall asleep, but then she remembered that her special comfort toys were on their way to her special friend from her special show. She smiled at this and we never looked back.
What about you? Did you come up with a great way to get rid of pacifiers in your house?
–Ali, senior associate editor of CF.ca
Copyright © 2012 St. Joseph Media. All Rights Reserved.
My DD had her’s til she turned 4, but DS was still on his secretly at 6 1/2. DD is a bit hypersenstive but DS has more oral fixations and is more officially SPD. So what we did was DD chose a doll she wanted and had to go 2 weeks with no ‘suki’ for it. He wasn’t allowed his any more either, of course. We bought it and it was put up on a shelf for her to earn. The lady at the store said she could make a chain to hang from the ceiling of all the parents who did the same, with old pacifiers. It’s funny because we didn’t hear of it from anyone else. It worked though!