Pacifiers – you love them when they are babies, like a God given gift – but as they grow you become sceptical and even concerned about kicking the habit. You’re now thinking your kids are too old and it may be embarrassing or just a concern. What do I do?
There are various schools of thought on how to cut the habit. I’ve heard them all. Instead of listing them, I’ll cut straight to the chase and say what I think is best (it’s merely my opinion). Mow we can go from chucking it out of thew window car wit harsh love and say “deal with it”, until the kid probably actually will. Or we can go away for the weekend and “oopsy daisies, we forgot it at the resort” and fine, eventually the child after either of the latter will have endless tantrums - like losing a grandparent – will eventually (hopefully) forget about it all...
However, I prefer the milder approach... start with:
(a) Enticing the child by fortifying the act and with rewards. For instance, saying "being a big boy/girl you don’t need your dummy." Encourage the child to reduce usage to bedtime only at first.
(b) If the other children in their class or age group have mostly stopped using a pacifier, without making the child feel ashamed, you can encourage them by saying “surely you don’t want other kids your age to see you with a dummy…”
(c) “ For being so brave and a big kid now, you’ll have a treat for not using your dummy…”
Slowly slowly the child will reject it themselves. A smart quote from a woman I read on her blog (whom sadly I can’t actually remember her name) said, “stop freaking out.. no child has gone to collage wearing diapers or using a dummy. They may however carry childhood trauma…”
So the lesson to take away is don’t stress too much and slowly and with encouragement, ease your child (in their own time) to detach from the pacifier. Life always takes it’s course with such matters. Don’t worry!