Going cold turkey on daytime dummy - come and hold my hand :-)

[ceebeegeebies]

DS2 is almost 2 and I have decided to restrict his dummy to naptimes/bedtimes only.

He never used to have it that much but his use has been slowly creeping up over the last few months...plus he was poorly last week so had it in permanently.

He is also a huge whinger and I am to say that we have used it to stop the whinging aswell.

Anyway, I have now decided enough is enough and for the last 2 days have not let him have it....tonight he cried on and off (mostly on!) from when I collected him from nursery at 5.30 until 6.50 when he had had his bath (which he screamed all through) and was sat downstairs watching Night Garden.

How many evenings is this going to go on for?? Will he cry for over an hour every evening??

Car journeys were the worst for us. Think it Lasted about a week, but it was worth it. DD now only has dummy for naps and bed. She never really asks for it during the day and has it at nursery only for a nap then puts it back in her bag afterward :). she says dummies are for babies but would start a riot if it wasn't there at bed time :) Not even thinking about a dummy free night yet, think that will be more of a challenge.

Thanks for your post - funnily enough he never has it at nursery other than at naptimes...it is just at home

I really want to get to the stage where he doesn't even ask for it...sounds like bliss!

Problem is that he won't even be distracted as he gets himself so hysterical.

Am happy for him to have it at nights for at least another year (DS1 was just over 3 when he chose to give up his dummies).

Having been through this with DS1 my advice would be to gently encourage him not to have it rather than try to restrict it. He is used to it, it gives him comfort and tbh taking it away with no real explanation will seem cruel to him. With DS1 (and now with DS2 who is about to turn 3) he had to remove it to talk or he didn't get listened to and it was playfully removed whenever we were doing something together. We used lots of distraction but never purposefully put it out of reach. Often we would ask him to put it in his pocket or with a teddy. I think this helped as he felt in control. As he got older we were able to talk to him about it and 'persuade' him to give it up. He gave it up day and night just before he started school.

I see no problem in this, our dentist didn't either so long as he didn't still have it once his adult teeth were coming through.

SIL took a different approach and put all dns dummies in a bowl in her bedroom. She was allowed to go an have a suck whenever she wanted but they were not allowed out of the bedroom.

Good luck. I did the same with DS1 at about the same age. As Pheebe's SIL did, I also restricted it to upstairs rather than banning it altogether during the day. For a few days he would disappear upstairs for a quick suck but soon got bored and came back downstairs without it. We had a few tantrummy episodes but he got the idea quite quickly. On a separate note the dummy fairy came last night so we had our first night without a dummy! It was no where near as bad as I had imagined and am hoping tonight is the same.