Any tips for giving up the pacifier?

Mama Angelina

I think it's time to nix the pacifier before DS (26 months) gets too much older and even more attached to it.  He only uses it for sleeping and on long car rides, but he would gladly have it in all day if I let him!   I think it will be tough at first and I don't know if any of us will sleep. 

Any tips from those of you who have already gone through this?  I was thinking of telling him we are going to give the pacis to all the new babies being born in our circle of friends.  A friend also loaned us the book Pacifiers Are Not Forever so we'll try that too.  TIA!

luckibrat

We did the same things that you are doing to rid of the binky. We went to pacifier for sleeping and plane rides/travel only to telling her that the new babies in daycare/among our friends needed them right around 26 months.

We also gave her a small travel pillow (because big girls sleep with pillows instead of pacifiers) and I made her fun pillow cases. She also got to choose a small stuffed animal (child safe without parts that could fall off, eyes, etc) to sleep with instead of the pacifier and that seemed to help.

She gave it up without too much incident. I think we had a few nights where she would cry every now and then, but it wasn't awful. Good luck!

cmh06

I know a bunch of people who went to Build A Bear and they put the pacifier in the bear and sewed it up.  The kids could sleep with the bear and know the pacifier was in there.

thiswillbe

We're planning to try to transition her to a lovey (one of those blankets-with-a-head things we got at Target). I'm thinking there will be a little overlap, where she gets both the paci and the lovey, and then when she's attached to the lovey (knock on wood), we'll take away the paci altogether. I tell you, though, I think it's going to be harder to wean my spouse from the paci than DD. My spouse treats the paci as the solution to every bump and bruise, lol! GL!!

claraj

We finally ditched the pacifier 6 weeks ago when DD was 34 months (!) old. She was only using it at night. We talked to her (a lot) about how pacifiers were for babies and we should give it to a baby we knew. We had to run through a list of 3-4 babies before we found one she was willing to "give" it to! 

This coincided nicely with the fact that she just transitioned from the toddler ("baby") room to preschool 1 at daycare. She was so excited to be in the big kid classroom that we emphasized that big kids also didn't use a paci.

The first couple of nights were tough. She wouldn't really ask for it, but at bedtime, she would whimper (sad!) and she woke up several times at night. But after the first few days, it was fine.

Makes me wish we had done it sooner!

ghostgirl

Like you, first we started only using it during naptime and bedtime.  At 22 months I threw all but two of them away.  With one of the two left, I cut off the pacifier tip (maybe 1/2 inch?) and would give that to him at naps and beds.  Cutting off the tip prevents them from getting the suction, so most kids aren't interested.  The first time I gave it to DS, he was like "WTF??".  He tried it a few times but kept spitting it out.  Gave it to him for his nap and he only had it in his mouth for about 15 seconds.  That first nap was rough - he did eventually sleep, but much less than usual.  That night he only woke up once and I just rocked him til he was ready to go back to bed.  The next nap, he just wanted to play with the paci by sticking his finger in the new hole.  He never tried putting it in his mouth again.  By day 3, all was back to normal and he hasn't had once since.

Oh - except for the occasion where he walk up to me with a pacifier in his mouth that he found in some random hiding place in the house!  That happened a few times until we eventually found them all;)