The blasted dummy

[goojit]

DS is 4 and has always been very attached to his dummy. We finally weaned him off daytime use about a year ago but he still has it at night and for long car journeys (it helps with travel sickness). A couple of months ago we were building up to getting rid of it at night too and had had some quite positive conversations with him about the dummy fairy, etc. but the last few weeks his attachment to it seems to be getting stronger. He's started going to his room in the middle of the day 'for a rest' and wants to go everywhere in the car so he can have the dummy. This morning he came downstairs with it in and refused to go out without it (which resulted in us all abandoning plans to go for ice cream on this lovely sunny day). I am really torn between thinking we need to nip this in the bud and go cold turkey day and night... and thinking he must need extra comfort at the moment for some reason and we should let this phase run its course. What should I do?

Do the dummy fairy, get him a present if you can afford it and most importantly just stick to it. Throw them all away, don't put them away 'just incase'. It will be a horrible few days but then it's done. Rip that plaster off as they say!

If he is needing comfort for some reason, he still has you for endless cuddles etc. don't feel emotionally manipulated into postponing it because you think he might need it for some unknown reason. If he's currently not ill, no major changes etc, just do it. Do a 3 day count down for him and just do it

We did the dummy fairy and it worked for us. We talked about it lots - in our version she collects dummies from the big kids who don't need them anymore so they can make them into dummies for new babies. Our fairy was also friends with the elves we have at Christmas. So she wrote a letter to dd (typed in a swirly pink font, splattered with glitter) and mentioned things the elves had told her about dd. And she left a box for dd to put all her dummies in, and in the morning it had been swapped for a gift (dd got peppa pig play doh)

The week after she was so poorly we ended up taking her to A&E cos she couldn't keep anything down and I presumed she'd want one, so had 1 in the bedside table ready to give her (that the fairy had forgot) but she never did.

Following. It’s really difficult and I’m worried because mine too because he uses it for comfort so much. He won’t hug us when upset even if we don’t give him the dummy. He’ll literally just be distraught on his own. It feels genuinely cruel to remove it as I don’t know how he’d cope.

Cut the teats off, dummies are broken. Few days of drama then it's over. 4 is way way too old for a dummy.

Did you go through this and what did your child switch their comfort to? I don’t want to go through head banging etc (sorry op I’m getting all involved now ahah)

Thanks all, sounds like I just need to bite the bullet and do it. Just got to focus on the bright, dummy-free future ahead I guess...

We did the dummy fairy too. We put all the dummies into a gift bag & hung it onto the handle of the front door before DS went to bed.

DS chose a toy that he was REALLY keen on having & we promised that it would be waiting for him the next morning.

The best advice was to throw all the dummies to the bottom of the wheelie bin so we wouldn't be tempted to give in.....

It went much better than I thought (there was part of me that didn't believe it would work) and after a bit of moaning on nights 2 & 3, we never looked back.

Good luck!

I have a 2.5 year old who still has one for sleep ( only ever had it for this so not had to worry about stopping in the day etc) and our plan is to stop when we come back from holiday with a story about leaving them for a smaller a child who needed them, this is going to be at the same time as moving into a big boy bed. I suspect we will get some push back but also think we need to just break it at some point. Really just sharing for solidarity and to say you are doing the right thing. Being a parent is hard sometimes but it is the right thing for them in the long run and our job is to recognise this. (Just remind in a couple of weeks when I have a screaming toddler )

@Newnamenewname109870 I did it when my daughter was 2. She only had one in her bed at that stage anyway, I just cut the teat off and told her it was broken and then she just held it for a few nights in her hand. She soon forgot about it when it fell down the side of the cot.