Tips for ending paci time?-13 months

LittleLeahBee

My husband and I are desperate to get rid of pacifiers. Our LO is truly addicted to them at the moment, and we're hoping to be pacifier free by his 15 month check up. That may seem like a long time from now, but we've been trying to ditch the paci since he was 6 months old, and continuously failing and needing to set new goals with the hopes of suddenly feeling stronger about the follow through. It's clearly OUR issue as, I'm sure he'd be fine after a while if we just found the strength emotionally to keep up with it. Do any of you have any tips or ideas about how we can make this happen? Our pediatrician suggested that we start by only allowing it in the crib and carseat...but I think he would probably be fine without it in the carseat too, if DH and I could "suck it up" ourselves. We so hate to hear him cry, because he generally never cries or fusses for any reason, so we've become accustomed to feeling like real tears mean something AWFUL is happening. We're suckers, but we love our little guy and we're struggling quite a bit with taking the paci away and feeling awful about how sad and frustrated he is without it.

Do any of you have any tips, or just words of encouragement from having been through this yourselves? Our LO is only 13 months, so too young to really understand why he can't have his paci when he wants it. It's heartbreaking watching him cry for it, knowing I have control over whether he has it or not. UGH! I wish we had never started with a paci, honestly! Retrospect is always clearer...darn. He has about 6 words that he's starting to say, but we only hear them from him during meal times and things like that when he is doing something to easily distract from the paci. Most of the day he has the paci in his mouth, and it's very clear that he might be practicing his words more often if he didn't have it. Hence why I'm hoping to be done with it sooner rather than later...but I'm struggling!

michelle7482

Definitely start with it just in his crib and car seat. It's very soothing for him so I wouldn't take it away just yet. I actually just took DD1 away at 2 yr. 7 mo. Now I know that was way too long but my now 13 mo old wasn't sleeping so I wasn't willing to have 2 kids up. To my surprise DD1 gave up the paci no problem. DD2 is 13 mo old and uses it in the crib and carseat. I'll take away the car seat around 15-16 mo and plan on letting her have it I the crib until 2. I guess my advice is if you limit the paci for sleeping time only it's not a big deal and everyone will be less stressed if you stop worrying about it now at 13 mo old.

valeriegp

My son only really used his during nap and bed time and if he was really, really upset. We stopped his use of it at around 17 months, I think. At first we stopped giving it to him when he was just upset. We did that for about a week. Then, we just threw them all away. We didn't make any big deal about it with him, like saying goodbye or anything. We just got rid of them one morning after he woke up and didn't give it to him that night. BUT -- he rarely ever specifically asked for it or things like that. He just needed it to fall asleep and he would wake up in the middle of the night and cry if he couldn't find it.

The first night he didn't sleep as well, but then he was pretty much okay. 

When you decide to go for it, I would recommend throwing them all away so that you can't give in.