Do any posh people give dummies?

[ButterflyMcQueen]

I am desperate to give ds a dummy -but am resisting for the same reason i breast feed for ages....

social stigma

dp says there is none attached to dummies but i disagree and feel i will be chastised by the chattering classes if I succumb, thoughts please

be gentle - i am very post natal with a two week old!

I feel that if parents give a child a dummy then they should not also be weaning them off dummies when they are a year or 2. I don't know when would be appropriate in all honesty but I would think that at 4 and 5 some children still have a strong urge to suck (same reason some children still bf at that age) therefore it is still 'biologically appropriate' to have them want to suck. The difference with dummies and boobies is that boobies are easier to put away at that age!

The SIDS dummy advice, I am afraid, is based on one very dodgy piece of research and has caused a lot of needless anxiety among mothers who want to establish breastfeeding but feel guilty that they are not getting the 'protective' benefits of a dummy.

As I said, if a dummy makes life easier for the parent and child then use it. I have found myself more than once in the past advocating for the toddler when the mum is feeling ambivalent about whether the dummy should stay or go.

Not sure if I'm posh, definately not rich...Ds has a dummy still at 18mo. But only when asleep.....I'm trying to avoid that "toddler in buggy in shopping centre/playgroup/restaurant with dummy wedged in mouth as some sort of tranquiliser" look.....I think that's maybe where the social stigma thing comes from. (sorry if causing any offence...pet peeve of mine)
On a serious note, how much worse is it than seeing a child sucking it's thumb? At least you have control over a dummy and can remove it....can't remove a thumb when it's still being sucked by a 13yo!!!

As in France, dummies are very popular in Belgium. I've heard of a paediatrician in Belgium telling a mother to give her three year old a dummy because the child was sucking her thumb and had caused a nasty infection. Needless to say the little girl never took to the dummy at age three!

If you're middle class you'll worry about this.

If you're upper class you'll do as you damn well please and bugger what anyone else thinks.

Who is hatcam

Another pretender to the Cam throne

thankyou all

never had a baby like this he is sooo sucky and i am sore

dont want tohave him addicted by 3 weeks old but i am truly frazzled

Wasn't the SIDS research something along the lines of if a baby has a dummy and then it is removed the baby is more at risk of SIDS as it falls into a deeper sleep, so if your child is used to a dummy the advice is not to remove it. I may have that completely wrong though, but it has been extrapolated by dummy companies to mean "dummies lower risk of SIDS".

one loved a dummy and was known to have 4 in his gob at once (picture documented for posterity) 3yr old is a thumb sucker and its cute, no worries unless hes still at it going to school and teased. Dummies are annoying in that A) theyre constantly being thrown on ground and B) arent available at the 24hr garage

butterfly i know that kind of sore! whatever provides you and your little one that bit of comfort, or for you respite dont sweat. if hes an addict then its a pretty harmless dependency which for my older boy was given up at about 3 when we all stopped making an issue of it
x

i think you might be right bumperlicious.

I don't know how this dummy snobbery evolved but I was the WORST culprit. With incredibly colicky, unsettled DS1, DH had to resort to giving him a dummy in secret for weeks before I discovered it, such was my rigid anti-dummy stance. We nearly divorced over the issue, I'm not kidding! But I eventually got used to his use of it and even started to find it rather wonderful myself when I was too too tired for more milkless breastfeeding/rocking/enforced 2am drives with my fingers crossed that no traffic lights were red/going out in the pram in the pouring rain etc.

With DS2 I was much more open to the idea, but I remember my horror when DH openly used the dummy in front of a load of my more middle class, NCT type friends. I hadn't realised I'd only been using it in secret until that moment.

My head tells me how utterly snobbish and ridiculous I was being, but the way I reacted just proves how potent a force such snobbishness is. Weird. What on earth was I afraid of?

both of them stopped wanting it at about 4 months, btw.

PS Also with both my boys started giving them a muslin to snuggle up to when they were sleepy from Day 1. Has worked a dream in terms of always having a sleep association/comforter to hand when needed. Would wholeheartedly recommend!

Goodluck butterfly,but after all your research he may decide he doesnt want one anyway.
My son gave his up when he was about 12 months, but my daughter was a dummy addict for sure. A shopping trip meant making sure she had one in her mouth and even better if she could hold onto one too, and it would not be worth the suffering if you forgot to put a spare in your bag! grrrr i remember those days all to well.
This time round my baby is not being offered a dummy, nothing to do with what others think, just dont want to be a slave to dummies. and i agree with jimjammum, it doesnt look nice to see 4-5 year old with one.

duches i laughed out loud at your post! will try the muslin thing then ( have given dummy tonight after a fracas with dp) - again in private but have made him PROMISE NEVER to give it!!

newshmoo i NEED pictorial evidence of the 4! I would LOVE him to thumb suck its so sweet and easy DS3 (5 years) sucks his and it looks lovely - on long journeys i still say 'put 2 in' and he does!

I think only the middle classes would object / be snobby. Not the sort of thing an upper class person would care about I think... but isn't that one of the 'social' definitions of the middle class??

Hey Butterfly,it's me from July 08.

I am very very posh and am desperately trying to force Logan to take a dummy. It really helped with the other two as they had reflux. Logan not so keen though.

And it was easy to get DS1 and DS2 off it. Just took it away one day - pretty much as soon as they tunred 2.5/ Nothing worse than a kid talking with a dummy hanging in their mouth.

do you proffer donuts as well ?

Only very occasionally - those mini ones from Sainsbury's are nice. Washed down with a bottle of coca cola. Gets them going.

WHo CARES what other people think?
Having said that, loads of people follow the 'in' thing. He's YOUR DS; do what you want.

My dd didn't have one as a baby but when she was about 11 months old and walking she started to steal them from the non-mobile babies at nursery. She then put the ring instead of the nipple in her mouth, not knowing which end to suck.

By about 15 months and still pinching them, she learnt which was was up so I bought her a couple. She took one to nursery so she would stop pinching and sucking other baby's dummies [barf] and they were great to get her to drop off to sleep in the car on long trips.

Even older, when I night weaned her, she found them comforting to fall asleep with at night. now at 3, she doesn't bother with them anymore.

littlelapin - lol i'm having good laugh at that site. tempted to order some for halloween and save on costume

was a member of the dummy gestapo until the arrival of DS (DC2), when I lasted about a week. He is now 18 mths and still has it to go to bed. He would have it all day if I let him and one of his first words was 'plastic' which is what it gets called.

I spent ages angsting about it when he was small and think I probably still have issues with it as he doesn't have it in public if I can avoid it, but it saved my sanity. Have felt better since discovering that the majority of the babies at his rather poncey nursery have one at some point

Both mine were born thumbsuckers but I gave them both dummies instead as I was a thumbsucker and infact still sucked my thumb at 18 whilst pregnant with DS In my defence I stopped from ages of 5-9 but started again when we moved and had to start new and miserable school. I'm not posh in theory but maybe in practise cos DH is now moving in higher circles through job so we have to conform!

tis terribly MC to care about dummies and those of us from big council estates shove 'em in at birth.
The only person I ever heard making a nasty comment was somone who thinks she's posh but I looked at her ludicrous fake tan and gold 4x4 and thought 'I don't think so, love.'
That said once you use 'em you're stuck with ensuring you have them everywhere. I recall a flight where my DDs dummy fell under the seat in front and I had to rootle around in the debris like a truffle hunter because she was wailing loudly enough to affect the radar.