Goodbye Pacifier!

Well it is official Jack has been without a plug now for two weeks! It is so hard to say when they should no longer be allowed to have them. The doctors give you guidelines for most things like no bottles after 12 months, etc. There is no guide that tells you when you should take away the pacifier. Jack was off the bottle at 10 months without even a blink, he was always good with a sippy cup so we had no problem packing those up. His plug has always been a sense of comfort for him so I was struggling to take it away. I knew I did not want to be the parent of the kid in Disneyland with a four year old sucking on a pacifier! I also knew that the sooner they disappeared the better, as he did not have a name for them yet. I packed up all the plugs we could find and put them in a Ziploc in the closet. For the next few days he managed to find more under his crib, or in a toy box and they slowly all got put in the bag.

I realized why parents allow their children to have them for a long time. The pacifier helped him go to sleep without crying and to sit in the car quietly, so it takes a lot more work on our end. But that is the reason we had children! We now sing songs in the car and play games which is helping him learn new words. Instead of putting him in his crib for naps and bedtime with his plug he lays in our bed with us while we read stories. I realized that we are now his sense of comfort and not a plastic pacifier!