DS1 has just turned 4 and has always had a dummy at bedtime (also very occasionally during the day if he's upset or hurts himself etc). We agreed ages ago that he'd give up the dummy when he turned four. The night he actually gave it up (Saturday) was hard but not too hard - he pleaded for it for a while at bedtime, but there were no actual tears, and he didn't wake in the night (though he took a long time to go to sleep and woke up very early). Since then I thought it had been going well - each night he's gone to sleep a bit more quickly, and slept a bit later in the morning, and after that first night he hasn't even mentioned the dummy.
However.... At preschool today, his key worker told me that since the weekend he's been a completely different child. He's normally a very gentle and sensitive soul - although he can be stroppy and highly strung, he's always very 'nice' with other children (in fact, his key worker said today that in the year he's been there, she's never once had to reprimand him for anything). Today, though, she said that on the two days he's been in this week, he's been snatching toys from other children, coming up with silly excuses when he's challenged by the adults, and then taking the toys again when he thinks they're not looking. And although he hasn't actually been physically aggressive, he has been playing much more roughly than normal. She was clearly flabbergasted by how out of character this was.
I'm panicking a bit. I'm really hoping it's just that he's extremely tired after four nights of reduced sleep, but the other half of me is horrified to think that we might have so emotionally traumatised him that he's going to change personality permanently.
Has anyone else experienced anything similar?