Cold Turkey

We´ve finally done it.... we´ve gotten Ari started on Pacifier-rehab.

This has been long overdue: we had intended to take the pacifier away at 9 months or so. But, as with so many other things, convenience has been getting the final word.
(that´s where it started: 3 months old)
Until last night. Daniel and I have noticed a gap between the upper-and lower-rows of Ari´s teeth, and we said, "okay, it´s time." We knew it would be agonizing, for all of us.

The pacifier, "pacy," or "tut," has served its purpose, alongside Bunnydog and Ari´s nature-sound machine. She has been a phenomenal sleeper and I think this has been due, in part, to these "helpers". Every night, every naptime, Ari would lay down, ask for "tut" & Bunnydog, the stars (projected onto her wall by the sound-machine) and that was that. It was part of the predictability and stability that she needed to fall asleep by herself.

We never really considered the pacifier to be a particularly disturbing habit in Ari´s case.
It was always just a part of the bedtime-routine: we´ve never allowed her to walk around with it, or to have it whilst playing or anything. In fact, we´ve hardly ever used it to calm her or comfort her.
So, at least breaking this habit would just be a matter of adjusting the bedtime-routine. We don´t have to deal with pacy-requests at any other time.

Anyhow, last night was part 1. I had already told her earlier in the day (when putting her to bed for a nap) that she would not have her "tut" again at bedtime. There´s only so much a toddler can remember and understand from such a statement, but I felt the need to prepare her somehow. So, last night, at 20:00 (bedtime), Daniel and I started the bedtime-routine: we washed her hands and face, brushed her teeth, read her a story, sang some songs, and put her in her sleeping-bag. Then, we handed Bunnydog to her (upon request, as usual), and said again, "You´re a big girl now. You can fall asleep without your pacy. The tut is for baby-zus."
It seemed rather ridiculous to be trying to convince her that this was just logic: that this is how life works when you´re no longer a baby. And even sillier to say that the pacifier belonged to her unborn baby-sister. But that´s how it came out, and Ari said, "ja," as though it made all the sense in the world, and then she even smiled.
Of course, twenty seconds later, she asked for "tut" anyway, as though the whole discussion had been a mere illustration, or a scare-tactic. So the drama started. It didn´t help at all that the nature-sound & star machine was out of batteries..... I immediately headed out to our Chinese neighborhood-store to buy some. Daniel went back to put on the sounds for her and to tell her she could just look at the stars & that she could sleep without her "tut". We repeated this about 4 or 5 times. It involved a lot of tears, a lot of crying & whining & begging. Eventually, she did fall asleep and stay asleep until morning.

I fear we´ll be going through the same thing again at nap-time, and then again at night. She won´t remember anything we´ve explained about how grown-up she is (or especially about the part where she agreed so enthusiastically). She´ll want her pacy, as usual.

So it will go for a few days, I reckon. And we´ll have to stick to what we´ve started. It is so much easier to just give her the darn thing and go to sleep. But we´ve fallen for that before. And that´s what makes the months and years go by. And then you´ve got bad teeth. Oh, and a child who gets what she wants instead of what she needs. So, we´re not going to go there.
Change hurts. Even parents suffer through these phases. We might know we´re doing what´s best for our children, but it hurts.....their tears cut through us.

There we go: another dramatic account of life with a toddler. It all becomes such a huge issue: this is the stuff of my days. It may sound very silly and trivial, but these are issues that have to be thought through, planned out, and lived through. They are experiments & experiences that shape our parenting.

P.S. It has taken us nearly two years to actually do this, and we´ve used none of the tactics we considered. There was no replacement-gift: no ritualistic throwing-away of all the old pacifiers... no sewing them into a new stuffed animal. Nothing. Just a bunch of words.