How to wean my daughter off soothers

[5dollah]

Hi, does anyone have any tips or tricks to get a 3 year old off soothers? I wish we'd never started using one with her in the first place now. She is addicted to them, particularly when going to sleep.

What’s a soother? A little blanket?

Well obviously the doodie fairy comes and brings a gift for the doodies!

You don’t wean them off you just take them away.

Worked a treat with my twins!

Mine hung theirs on the Christmas tree and Santa took them away in exchange for their gifts.

If you don't want to wait to Christmas, maybe you can make up a Soother Fairy story instead 😁

It’s a dummy / paci/ dodey

A dummy? Just don't give it her. Deal with the upset, it'll be fine in a few days.

Ah…thanks.

Cut a tiny bit of the tip off. It loses its draw once the internal bubble bit has no more air on it.

I had this with a 3.10 year old. Just rip the plaster off and take them away. Mine forgot within 3 days

I would gradually cut down her dependence on them. So strict rule of no talking with them in. If you're going out "forget" get it so she can't have it while you are out. Once that is in place and especially if she has managed to have a couple of car naps without a dummy cut down to at night only and as near to going to sleep as possible. Then loose it and have to go looking for it so she goes to sleep one night without it. "0h dear your dummy is missing - you settle down and I'll go look for it" Do this on a night when you've REALLY tired her out and she's going to go to sleep quickly. Once you've done that it's a case of losing them and not being able to find them at all. Another trick is to not replace one when it gets damaged - tell her they don't make that type anymore and a damaged dummy is dangerous. Eventually you just won't have any!

I just binned them all and said we don’t have dummies anymore like it was no big deal, DC has a tendency to feed on drama so I went with a very low drama approach. She was under 2.5 but was asking for it and that’s when I realised it had gone on too long. I did the same for getting rid of baby bottles.

If I was to have another I would remove it just after their first birthday, as the risk of SIDS is much lower at that point, maybe even gradually reducing it from six months.

Do you mean a dummy? Start by not giving it to her during the day or only at certain times, don't allow her to speak with it in, but give it to her at night if it helps her sleep, you have to be consistent with your "plan" then eventually you can just take it away, aim for a specific event where you can swap it for a special gift.

Thanks guys, lots of helpful advice there.

DD was 4 when she gave up her dummies. She only ever had them for sleeping (to fall asleep, they usually fell out once she was asleep).

And because she was a super shit sleeper there was no way we'd have removed it and risked the sleep getting worse!

2nd week into starting reception at school (June baby) she binned them herself because she was a big girl, no input from us bar the occasional, "should we get rid of the dummies?" question every now and then.

We'll do the same with DD2, who is nearly 2. Dummies for sleep only since birth and she'll give them up when she's ready.

Dd1 was also 4 we don't have reception in Scotland she was in preschool, i aimed for her to be dummy free before starting school in August,..she "swapped it" for pencil case tatt, she wasn't happy about it but she took a couple of nights to settle and she was fine, she only had it at night by then..

We never used dummies, but I would “lose” your daughter’s and keep “forgetting” to buy a new one. She’ll forget about it in a couple of days.

assuming you mean a dummy just chuck them all away and say you don’t know where they are.

At first my son was only allowed his At bedtime, then after that the fairies took it away and left him a present. It took a while though because he kept asking for the fairies to bring it back as he'd rather have his dummy than the new toy

I don't know why people are correcting the OP's terminology here. You could easily google the term if you weren't sure what she was talking about.

A lot of people I knew back when my DCs were toddlers went with the 'tooth fairy' approach. They gathered all the pacifiers they could find and left them out for the fairy, who left a stuffed animal instead.

Well people could google but they were just wanting clarification and this is a chat forum it is better asking imo than googiling, nobody is "correcting" the op.

I just bit a hole in my DS dummy and he went off it immediately and never asked for another one

When my daughter had just turned one she started chewing hers and split it so it was coming away. Due to safety we just had to take it off her cold turkey. She fussed for a day or so but as we couldn’t relent we kept strong and she just adjusted

From the age of one we only let our little boy have a dummy at bedtime. He’s 2.5 now and 2 weeks ago I decided to see if he would get rid of them completely, I asked him if we should give them to the little babies and he said yes, we bagged them all up and he’s not asked for them since.