Why are parents so reluctant to get rid of the dummy?

[ForLimeHiker]

I’ve got a few friends with children between 6-30 months, and they do nothing but moan about the dummy dependency, how it looks awful, how it disrupts their sleep and has become such an albatross round the neck. I don’t understand why they don’t just put a stop to it? We never used one for our daughter as I could see this happening, but honestly surely after this much complaining, recognise the issue and just get rid? I don’t have any particular feelings against them, certainly no judgement, but surely if you know something is the cause of a lot of the issues you’re facing, bite the bullet?**

having chosen not to use a dummy yourself doesn’t really tell you how easy or difficult it is for another family to stop using one

one of my had her dummy til she was 4. She had undiagnosed at that time autism and adhd and a pda profile.

i was judged the fuck out of but we didn’t know she had an ASD profile at the time.

people judged and judged and I started to proactively say I’d tried to take it off her and failed because I knew what they were thinking.

It makes parents' lives easier in the moment.

That must have been very difficult. As I’ve said previously, it’s absolutely not a question fuelled by judgement, just out of curiosity when I’ve heard a lot of complaints. It took us a while to get rid of bottles at bedtime and you do definitely explain things away when you feel you should have moved past something!

We did this with our eldest - it worked so well. He was absolutely fine. No crying whatsoever. He had a wobble about 2 weeks later (after absolutely no issues) where he got a bit teary-eyed at bedtime and told me he missed his dummies and asked when they were coming back. I just told him he was a big boy now, they weren't coming back and reminded him of his awesome present from the dummy fairy. We had a big cuddle and never mentioned them again. Good luck!

Only my youngest had dummies and he was a proper addict. Had them stashed all over the house! He was about 2 when he started to chew them and they split so were useless. I just stopped buying more and when we got down to the last one, we had a couple of tearful nights but it was more painless than I expected. I wasn’t a fan of them and DS1 didn’t have one but DS2 really liked his. Each to their own really.

Ah well fingers crossed then! Mine still randomly asks for it after several months and tries to persuade me she’s still a baby!

Well I'm glad I never had to introduce one but I only have one DC so far, breastfed and he cluster fed a huge amount and still has a feed at night. And I've got into some crazy habits trying to get him to sleep like leaning over the next to me feeding him to try and get him to stay down longer so I can't act superior at all.

Friend of mine is in a medical job and was very anti dummy but said her baby literally wouldn't let her get off the sofa all day feeding constantly until she introduced one.

Have to be honest though I do think I judge toddlers 2, 2.5, 3 running round with dummies in the daytime. On the one hand, what do I know, I got lucky not having to use one. On the other hand, I think daytime it must be impacting speech surely. So that's my guilty area of judgement.

None of my 3 daughters had a dummy but with the third when she was three I had to go away, so her GM came to look after all three at home. Before I left she asked if she could suck her thumb like her friend, to which I said of course. She continued to suck it till she was 9 when the dentist said it had stopped her palate from widening. She had to have a two year treatment, a bar attached to either side of the jaw and a screw turned each day so that all her teeth had room to grow.