Two year olds with dummies

[Ticklemeharder]

Really noticing a big trend in older kids with dummies in my friendship circle. We’ve all had kids around the same sort of time but I realised when we met up recently that my two year old was the only one out of six kids over 2 that didn’t have one. I feel like I’ve missed some parenting hack here because they mostly were a lot better behaved than my two year old and the parents seemed very nonchalant about their teeth. (I didn’t bring it up but one parent was chatting to another’s about her daughters protruding teeth and the other said they don’t worry as they fall straight very quickly once the dummy is given up whether now or in a years time). Recently gone through a very stressful time taking the dummy off my six month old and now wondering whether I needed to bother! Does everyone else keep the dummies going for their toddlers?

It’s interesting that most of you say that you only use them at night or for nap times. My friends kids all had them either in when playing or attached on one of those name chain things. All their speech was pretty good as far as I could tell although a couple needed reminding to take their dummy’s out their mouth to talk

My two had dummies for ages, it was the only thing that soothed them. At one point I insisted that they were for sleep times only, but they must have been approaching two if not older at that point.

I let them wean themselves off completely when they were ready, around the age of 3.5. No cold turkey, no tears, no sleeplessness, no stress.

And their teeth are fine too. I don’t know why MN insists you wrench dummies away from little babies in case they get “addicted”.

My 18 month old only has his for naps/sleep. I feel like it's completely unnecessary to have it in while playing - they're happy and playing, so why do they need a dummy in??

When he was younger, we were taking it out while he was playing and would only use it to soothe if crying during the day - however we stopped that fully at around 10 months.

Thinking of getting rid of it for naps/sleep soon, however he's a wonderful sleeper at the moment and has a dummy which is designed to not mess with his teeth as much - he also spends most of the night without it in his mouth!