A Cure For Your Child’s Pacifier Obsession?

DISCLAIMER: The following technique may or may not be appropriate for your child! It has not been approved by any psychologist as a good solution for your child’s obsession with pacifiers. My intention here is to share with you a funny story that ended well for my daughter, but I am in no way advocating causing trauma to your child! Please take the following with a grain of salt:

My daughter was about to turn four. She had an intense obsession with pacifiers.She would go to sleep with no less than three on a chain, and in her sleep she would not only rotate the pacifier in her mouth, she would also change pacifiers!  Out of concern mostly for her teeth, we decided enough was enough!

My husband heard a Rav (don’t know who) speaking about parenting issues on the radio and heard about this course of action: take all the pacifiers (or bottles) in the house, put them in a plastic bag and hang them on a tree. Tell the child that the tree will give them a present for being so brave and giving up their pacifier. Go back in the house, have someone take down the bag and replace it with a large prize, something they’ve really wanted, like for example a bicycle. That’s it!

I must admit, when I heard this story I thought “that’s crazy!” but decided to go along with my husband and give it a try. In the meantime my husband went to the store and bought my daughter a shiny new red bike, and I started to prepare her with the idea: if we give the tree all the pacifiers it  will give her a big present in return!  She agreed to give it a try and together we searched he whole house high and low for all the pacifiers. We made a big deal out of this whole process and I photographed the whole thing.

Later on my daughter watched as we pulled a shiny new bike out of the tree and from that day on she was pacifier free. We were very lucky, she took it all in stride and didn’t even cry for a pacifier or regret that she’d given them up. She said the first night was a little hard but after that she forgot all about her trusted companions!

Today just three years later we laugh about that fateful day, and I can only hope that all the milestones in her life should pass with such ease!