Steps on how to ditch the dummy

This post is written by Jess who is a mom of two and also the nursery coordinator for Little Green House Childcare.

Dummies, some children take to them and use them to soothe themselves. Which is great but when it comes to the time to say bye to the dummy sometimes it’s not that easy. As a parent who has gone through this with my own child. I can honestly say It wasn’t as hard as I expected but I think that’s because I did it a step at a time and that really helped.

Here is what I did with my daughter. Hopefully it will help you also

We started off at around 18 months of age limiting the amount of time she had her dummy. We found that she wasn’t talking as much as some of the other children in her peer group. I didn’t know if this was because there was a lot going on at home with a new baby on the way. I just knew that the dummy would be a contributing factor. So, we made a point of only letting her have her dummy when she was tired. So, this meant we needed to make sure that there weren’t any dummies stashed around the house in places she could get too. When they weren’t being used, we put them in a bowl in the kitchen. Ready for when she was getting tired.

Our biggest hurdle to get over was not having the dummy in the car. I don’t know why but we always gave her, her dummy as soon as she got in the car. It became such a habit for both us and her, so we knew this was something we had to break. I’m not going to lie when we first stopped the dummy in the car. She wasn’t happy about it we had a lot of meltdowns. So, we started to play more of the music in the car that she liked. This distracted her from not having a dummy and she started to enjoy the car ride again.

Next, we moved onto leaving her dummy in her bed once she had woken up. So as soon as she woke up her dummy stayed in her bed and didn’t come downstairs. This was a lot easier than I expected it to be. I think she had become used to not having it around all the time.

Then came to finial step the one I was dreading. The dummy was to go altogether. She was nearly 3 and was loving the idea of Santa and getting presents. It was the first year she was really interested in it. So, we thought we would use this to our advantage. She loved crafts so we made a basket for her dummy to go in. That we would then leave out on Christmas Eve for Santa to take and give to little babies and in return he would give her a present.

You know what! it worked a treat she was so excited about her presents and the joy of Christmas that she didn’t even ask for her dummies. She had maybe one or two wobbles weeks after and tried to take her brothers dummy but it wasn’t half as bad as I thought it was going to be.

Since ditching the dummy her speech has improved so much. She sleeps a lot better which I think is down to not using a dummy in the night and waking for it. So, don’t worry it’s not always as bad as you think it’s going to be.

I know many of my parent friends have taken the dummy away a lot earlier than we did. They took it away at like 6 months before their little one got really attached to it and this worked for them. You just do what works for you and your little one. If they are older then make sure they know what is happening and don’t just surprise them with one day that all their dummies have gone. With everything communication is key so remember to communicate to them what is happening.