pacifiers
parents' tips on stopping thumb sucking and use of dummies
- Use a bandage and wrap your child’s straight arm around the elbow area - but not too tight. This prevents your thumb sucker from being able to bend the arm to suck. A pain free and tasteless option!
- I cut the tip off the dummy and told him it was broken. When he tried sucking it, it didn't feel right. Then when I offered it to him at night, he didn’t want it. No dramas, no crying - it was so simple.
- One day he couldn’t find his pacifier. Not unusal, but this time I decided to see what would happen if it couldn’t be 'found'. Surprisingly it worked! The first night without it was a little rocky and I felt a little guilty but he got through it and we were fine thereafter.
- We asked our son if we could give his dummy to his best friend’s new baby. He agreed to this and now when he asks for it we remind him that we wrapped it up for the new baby.
- To get rid of the pacifier we invented a ‘bub bub’ fairy. For all three of our children, after their second birthday, we told them the fairy had to take their ‘bub bub’ to another little baby who needed it. The children put it in the letterbox so the fairy could collect it overnight. In its place, the fairy would leave a present. Worked a treat!
- A tried and tested method in our family, which has been used on several generations of children, is to coat the thumb with a bitter-tasting paint (for deterring nail biters) which you get from the chemist. Additionally for bed when an awful taste alone may not be enough, wrap the thumb in fabric sticking plaster which also makes it uncomfortable to suck while sleeping.
- I painted 'Stop and Grow' nail biting solution onto her nail and we talked about the horrible taste and that it would help her stop sucking. During the day it was a breeze, but at night she would wake and start gagging on the taste of her thumb. We persevered and every couple of days I painted more 'Stop and Grow' on her nail. She soon broke the habit and we also gave her a special doll for being so clever.
- I cut the teat of the dummy in half so that as soon as he popped it into his mouth, it fell out. After another couple of attempts, he brought it over to me looking mystified. I explained it was broken, probably because he was a big boy now, and I couldn’t repair it. We held a small ceremony to ‘throw it away’ and after only one night of him wanting it, we never looked back.
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