Trying to Take My Pacifier Away from 18 Month Old per Drs. Suggestion and Uh!!!!

i loved my paci and my daughter loved hers.... I no longer have it, i didnt go to college with it didnt even walk in to kindergarten with it. dont sweat it you will know when the time is right... my daughter had hers until she was a little over 3 and i had mine wayyyy longer. i took my daughters away and she found her thumb if it calms her down who cares!

Our oldest was over 3 when we took it away....2 days were hard after that he was fine(his teeth were not affected at all) He did try to replace it with thumb,so I had to take it out every 5 min in those 2 days:)
With our youngest we took it away before he was 1........it was much easier.But I have to agree that our oldest was so much calmer because of paci.His terrible 2s tantrams were over in seconds since paci always came to the rescue(very convenient in a car or grocery store as well:)). I am sure I will be one of a few but I am all for pacis! (we have friends who's kids still suck their thumbs at 8/9/ 10 years old and you can tell by their teeth big time)

My daughter was 3 when she willingly gave it up. Our friends pushed their daughter to give hers up at the same time. The friend's daughter is 5 months younger and found her thumb. It's almost a year later and the thumb is in her mouth all day (her paci was only at nap/night!!)
My dentist and personal friend said teeth correct better from pacifiers than years of thumb sucking. So we were willing to 'deal' with needing a pacifier for a bit longer until the time was right. Initially, her teeth did not come together in the front! But it's been 10 months and her bite is perfect!
Plus, our pediatrician just had his first child and is apologizing all over himself for even beginning to act like the behavior expert for our kids!! Medical degree doesn't always equal expert in behavior!!
Follow your instincts! At the worst - braces, which are practically a given for everyone anyway!

Hi Tami,
First off, you should expect some resistance/insecurity to come from your baby when you change a big thing like a paci, especially if she uses it a lot. Anybody has a hard time breaking habits, especially 'self-soothing' habits. Are you still giving it to her during her naps? If so, she has two little islands during a 24 hour period where she has it. Meanwhile, here's what we did to wean our son from his paci: We cut a little nick in the end of the paci so that the suction wasn't as strong, and he used it like that for a couple of days. We made the hole a little bigger for 2 more days, and then a little bigger for the last stage. There really wasn't much suction at that point, and he got disgusted and started leaving them alone. At that point, I started removing them, one by one, so he had to go looking to find one if he really needed it, 'broken' and all. When I saw that he didn't use it for about 3 days, I made a clean sweep and got rid of the rest. Then I started the process with the 'crib paci', which was his last place he still used it. The whole process was pretty gradual and painless. Hope that helps some! J.

Poor baby! I let my boys have their paci's until they were ready to give them up. At 2 1/2, though, I told them they could only have them in their bed. If they needed it for soothing during the day, they had to go to their bed. At around 3, both of them told me that they didn't need them anymore, that they were for babies. No crying, no thumb sucking, no problems.

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Hi Tami, my ds had a paci too. Somewhere around 18 months to 2 we moved to just using it nights also. It was a slow process ... we included naps at first and then told him it was just for night. He had to give it up completely at about 2 1/2 ... he had an accident and hurt his front tooth. He couldn't suck for a few days. The dentist told him it was time to stop sucking it or it would make his teeth crooked. So, when he could suck again and wanted it at night, that is what we told him. He asked for it for about 5 nights ... then never again.

I say do what feels right to you and your lo.

Good luck! D..

I dont know if she is old enough to understand, but I found this website facinating.

www.nomorebinky.com

I hope this helps.

give it back and ignore your doctor's bad advice. There is nothing wrong with a pacifier at 18 months old. You'll just create an oral fixation that leads to nail biting or thumb sucking or something worse. This is a naturally stressful time for a baby and my older kids didn't stop needing it until almost 3. My 2 1/2 year old still needs hers. Our pedatric dentist said it was better than thumb sucking by far. Our pediatrician has no issue with the paci as long as there is no speach delay.

we went cold turkey a bit before my son turned 2. i cut all the nipples off so he could see they were broken and had him throw them away. well, it was kinda ruff for about 2 weeks. more so during the day while he had to learn how to self sooth instead if me just shoving the thing in his mouth. night time only took a few days to get past and he went back to going right to bed and sleeping all noght. you definatly need a strong will to do it this way and there were many times i thought of breaking down and buying him one but now paci is a distant memory and he got over it and isn't scared for life or anything. what ever way you choose to do it good luck! it's not an easy task but the longer you wait the harder it is, next baby i'm gonna ween before a year!

my son had just turned two, I decided when the last one got lost, cause we lost them so much, we would just be done. he asked for it and cryied the first few days and i told him " i don't know where they went they are all gone" the first night he told me to look for it, find it. the second day i told him to, so we looked together, i had thrown it away apon finding it. we serched all the usual and unusual places. after the third or fourth day he would ask every once in a while "where is binki" and i told him "they are all gone now your a big boy". this passed and i could never go back now. he will move on.