Rehabbing the Paci Addict

[AnaKhouri]

OK, we're doing it. This weekend, the pacifier goes bye-bye forever.

Khan is 21 months old. He has used paci since 4 days after he was born (I was all, 'My kid isn't going to get a pacifier!' and then the very first night we were home I was all, 'OMG PUT IT IN NOW.'). When he turned 1, I started weaning him down and now he only uses it at night or for naps. But he seems very dependent on it for sleeping purposes. If he wakes in the middle of the night because it has fallen from his mouth, giving him his paci back sends him right back to sleep.

For a week now I have been telling him, "In X days, the paci is going bye-bye forever. Only little babies need pacis. You're a big boy and don't need one anymore."

Even so, this weekend is going to be Hell on wheels. I plan to let him cry as long as it takes, and hopefully by Monday he will be rehabbed.

So anyone have any suggestions on how to make it easier on him (and us)? He has a bedtime routine and I am thinking of adding something to it to replace the paci, like reading a story (we don't usually read a bedtime story because we read about 200 books to him every day...or sometimes the same book 200 times).

I am a little concerned because this is the single most mule-headed child I have ever seen. I gave him a different kind of sippy cup than he normally uses, and he took one look, threw it on the floor and howled. Since then I've discovered he'll die of dehydration before he uses a different cup (seriously, we went 6 hours before I gave in out of worry and handed him the old one).

Anyone else done this, and at what age and how??

[teh_blumchenkinder]

Careful! He might get an oral fixation-- I chewed. Still do, really. Not sure if it's the ADD or childhood trauma. Fingernails, hair (when it was long enough), railings, banisters, fabrics, gum, pen(cil)s, anything and everything.
I don't envy you.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I have a terrible confession. I let my kid have one when she's sleeping. She's five.

I know. Nancy Grace is gonna do a special about me and rail about what a terrible mommy I am. I know, I know.

She grinds her freaking teeth otherwise! The dentist says "let her grind" but hell, I don't want to do that, you can hear it in the other room! Not to mention that sometimes I grind, and it's not awesome. Sore jaw, worn teeth. Not cool. I mean, I don't want her to grind her teeth, so I let her use the paci when she sleeps. I figure there are other hills to die on other than this one. Screw it, you know?

As soon as she falls deeply asleep, it falls out of her mouth, anyways.

[teh_blumchenkinder]

Grinding teeth is superbad, for the entire head/face. TMJ, for one, it also cracks your teeth, which leads to a lot of nasty problems. I'd look for a second opinion.
You might look into getting a sports mouth guard for you and the kidlet. Mom had to get a super-spiffy one with like space-age titanium bullcrap and it still got ground through!
I don't know what she's doing now.
And it's not a psychological need, though, is it?
EDIT: look up tongue thrust. This made my teeth out of whack, until well after my braces were out.

[Kogarashi]

We ditched the paci at 19 months. We'd been weaning Nudge (younger child) down to just naps and bedtime up until then, and decided it was time to get rid of it. So we stole an idea from a friend of my in-laws.

On a given day when the in-laws were in town, we went to the mall to Build-a-Bear and let Nudge pick out her favorite teddy body. We helped her stuff it, then put the paci in its tummy right where she could feel it. She looked a little concerned, but she was getting a pretty teddy bear out of the deal so she didn't throw a fit in the store. We named the bear Pacibear and everything.

She spent the next two weeks resenting Pacibear because all the other pacis in the house had disappeared, and Pacibear had eaten her favorite. After two weeks of showing her that her paci was right there on the other side of the tummy fur and encouraging her to cuddle the bear at bedtime, she finally forgave the bear and now adores it (she's just shy of 24 months now).

We'd originally given her the pacifier because she found her thumb pretty quickly, and seeing as I have an 8-year-old cousin who still sucks his and hasn't broken the habit yet despite ridicule at school and encouragement from his mother, we didn't want that stress. We figured a paci would be easier to get rid of in the long run. Nudge was old enough when we ditched it that we could tell her not to suck her thumb and she'd listen, and she's only really chewed recently as part of that almost-two-years-old discovery thing, where she knows it gets a reaction out of Mommy when she chews on blankets and her stuffed animals' ears. The little punk. Our older child went easy on us and never once fixated on either paci or thumb. In fact, she hated sucking on them.

Good luck with weaning Khan!

[Seshat]

Tooth grinding broke one of my molars. My dentist now gives me special splints to sleep with. New ones each time I grind through the old ones.

So yeah, even adults can need 'pacifiers'. And tooth grinding is BAD.

That said, I love the idea of pacibear.

[Riesie]

We left it a bit later with my little boy (he was too reliant on it when he was younger), but eventually we got him to leave it alone by having him round up all the dummies he could find and put them in a little gift bag that he kept on his bookshelf and 'swapping' them for a new toy (just a little tractor). When he asked for one the next day we just explained that he had the tractor instead, and he wandered off to play with that.

[fireheart]

Try hanging it up out in the garden and saying that the "Paci fairies" are going to take it away to another child. Then have them leave a toy in place.

[42_42_42]

For all you tooth grinders and jaw clenchers out there, find yourself a dentist who can fit you for an NTI. I have one and it is wonderful. It's this small plastic piece that's custom made to fit over your front teeth. It takes less than 30 minutes at the dentist's office to have one made and they're fairly inexpensive. Here's a website w/ more info about them: http://www.nti-tss.com/

[crazyofficeclerk]

I agree with Fireheart. A friend of mine did this with her daughter then her son and it worked great. They actually left the house and had a relative come over and remove the paci and leave the toys in its place. She said it worked like a charm.

[BookstoreEscapee]

DIT: look up tongue thrust. This made my teeth out of whack, until well after my braces were out.

I did this, and I sucked my thumb. The only reason my top front teeth weren't totally crooked (like my bottom ones were - I didn't have enough room in my jaw) was because they were pulled forward. When I was 7 I had a thing that was like a little fence behind my teeth to keep me from doing both. The orthodontist also had me suck on life savers with the tip of my tongue in the hole to train me to place it properly when I swallowed (how many dentists actually tell a kid to eat candy?! ).

On a given day when the in-laws were in town, we went to the mall to Build-a-Bear and let Nudge pick out her favorite teddy body. We helped her stuff it, then put the paci in its tummy right where she could feel it. She looked a little concerned, but she was getting a pretty teddy bear out of the deal so she didn't throw a fit in the store. We named the bear Pacibear and everything.

She spent the next two weeks resenting Pacibear because all the other pacis in the house had disappeared, and Pacibear had eaten her favorite. After two weeks of showing her that her paci was right there on the other side of the tummy fur and encouraging her to cuddle the bear at bedtime, she finally forgave the bear and now adores it (she's just shy of 24 months now).

That is too cute. I went for the thumb...can't take that away! (My brother had a pacifier; apparently I absolutely refused it from day one.)

I sucked my thumb until I was seven, but by the time I started school I only did it at night (or at home, at least). When I was about 4 I remember my grandfather asking me if it was chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry.

[AdminAssistant]

I sucked my thumb so much that my front teeth were crooked. I stopped by the time I went to school, I think. In fact, to this day, I sleep with my hand right by my mouth. Old habits die hard.

[teh_blumchenkinder]

To help with tongue thrust, I went to an awesome old-man speech therapist, got braces rubber bands to hold to the top of my mouth... heh. Those I played with, chewed on, and swallowed XD
I need to figure out what my tongue is doing now. :\
On Topic... yeah the paci-fairy thing sounds adorable! BUT Khan is a boy not a girl, so maybe something more 'manly'... or not. Fairies are epic. :3

[fireheart]

To help with tongue thrust, I went to an awesome old-man speech therapist, got braces rubber bands to hold to the top of my mouth... heh. Those I played with, chewed on, and swallowed XD
I need to figure out what my tongue is doing now. :\
On Topic... yeah the paci-fairy thing sounds adorable! BUT Khan is a boy not a girl, so maybe something more 'manly'... or not. Fairies are epic. :3

What's the male equivelent of the tooth fairy?

But yeah, there's a section in Thats Life (a magazine that has more real-life stories as opposed to celebrity gossip) called Mums Club which has stuff like that. The paci-fairy thing was a suggested idea, except it was for a bottle.

Maybe the "pacifier god?"

[Kogarashi]

I don't think my sisters and I were ever thumb-suckers, but then my mother subscribes the the same sucking theory that I do. It's easier to get rid of the paci in the long run, so that's what we all got when we didn't have a bottle. The only time we ever had trouble from Mom's philosophy was when my next-oldest sibling (I'm the oldest, this is Number Two of five we're talking here) was regularly put to bed with a bottle of milk. Mom learned the hard way why you shouldn't do that when both of my sister's top front teeth rotted and had to be pulled out by the dentist. Grandpa teased my sister for years by singing "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" until her adult teeth grew in. The other three got bottles of water for bedtime after that.

And as I type this, Nudge is napping on the couch with Pacibear cuddled tightly in her arms, so the bear can be forgiven. And lest anyone think it only works for girls, Build-a-Bear has plenty of boy-friendly designs too. Same goes for the Paci-Fairy. I've never heard of people stressing over a "boy version" of the Tooth Fairy, so why should the Paci/Bottle Fairy be any different?

The orthodontist also had me suck on life savers with the tip of my tongue in the hole to train me to place it properly when I swallowed (how many dentists actually tell a kid to eat candy?! ).

Mine does! But then, my dentist is my FIL. My MIL loves going shopping for candy at the after-holiday sales. She always buys a lot to keep the candy drawer at their house stocked (she believes that keeping it readily on hand like that all the time actually cuts down on binging, and it seems to have worked for Hubby and his siblings), and whenever the cashier says "Your dentist must love you," she grins cheerfully and says, "Oh, he does!"