Ok so we have had quite an issue with the Pacifier habit with Addie, she has been extremely attached since she was a couple of months old. We have in the past tried to limit it to only naps and night time but that seemed to fail every time she got sick (she would get attached to it three times more), it had gotten to the point that she wanted it every minute of the day and would give quite the temper tantrum until she got it. This had to stop, so this weekend we had enough of it and decided it was time to take it away. We did the cold turkey method and just gathered them all up when she got home from daycare Friday night and decided to hold our ground with her. Of course my husband wanted to cave at the first sign of her getting upset about it, so i had to be the strong one and say no we are doing this and that is it. She surprisingly did very well with the entire ordeal, of course we did have a few mini-breakdowns Friday night when it was time for bed she was not overly thrilled and there was a few tears but after about 15min or so she gave up and went to sleep. The following morning she was asking for it again and was pretty upset that i told her “No that binki was all gone, it went bye bye,” this did not sit real well with her but after a few min she gave up and went on to something else. The rest of the weekend went on about the same way she would ask for it every so often and i would give her the same response then change the subject. So here we are almost a full week has gone by and still no binki, she still on occasion asks for it but all in all we are binki free. I would recommend to anyone who gives their child a binki to try and break the habit as early as 6 months old.But if you have a child like Addie who was extremely colicky and never slept, it may not be that easy. This being the reason why I decided to share my story with everyone of how we struggled through it. There are so many ways to go about breaking the habit from, limiting time with it, to sending it away with the trash and watching it drive away, donating it to another child, and or even the bribery method. I’m sure all methods work great depending on the child, with mine there was no reasoning when it came to the binki, any mention of trading it in for a new toy, telling her big girls don’t need it and so on… we tried them all and they just didn’t have any effect, so cold turkey was the only way for us. Good luck to the rest of you who may be going through the same thing. 🙂
