It’s a fact of parenthood that just as you start to rest on your laurels, something comes along to shake things up. Touch wood, we’ve been in a pretty good bedtime routine with Baby Lighty for a while now. We’d do the whole bath, book, bed, with milk during story time before switching to the dummy for bedtime. Ah yes, the dummy. Or the nummy, as Baby Lighty calls it. Therein lies the thing that’s shaking our parenting core! Therein lies the thing that may well make us admit defeat!
We only ever introduced the dummy because we were told by the midwives when Mrs Lighty was breastfeeding that it would help to settle our constant feeder. Had I known then what a big old breastfeeding failure I’d be, I may not have introduced it. And now, two years on, I feel like it’s one of the big three we’ve got to tackle:
1. The dummy
2. The cot bed
3. Potty training
Is the dummy the lesser of three evils?! Who knows?
Anyway, we decided to start with the dummy. Whether this was wise remains to be seen. We’d started to talk to Baby Lighty about ditching the dummy and were always met with, shall we say, *some* resistance. In other words, a complete meltdown! When we suggested that the dummy was needed by new babies, Baby Lighty’s response was “Nooooo baby, my nummy!” Ok then, we’ll take that as a no then, shall we?!
We also suggested that, should he be able to give the dummy up, he could have a new toy of some description. That went a little something like this:
“If you don’t have the dummy, you could have a new car!”
“No!”
“A new book?”
“No!”
“A jump jump?” [a trampoline]
“No!”
“A new puzzle?”
“No!”
“Something for the garden?”
“No!”
“Something when we go to see The Wiggles?”
“No!”
*Sigh!!!!!!*
So what was there to do but go cold turkey?
Two dummies at once…this is how much the child loves his ‘nummy’! Help!!
The second night, however, we’d been at Nanny and Grandad Hatchy’s for dinner. We got home late, and Baby Lighty was pretty tired. So we put him to bed without his dummy. He drank his milk, shouted out that it was all gone, and miraculously, went to sleep!
“Well, that was all too easy,” we thought, “surely we haven’t spent the past two years worrying about the dummy for that to happen?!” Now if only that were the end of the tale, dear reader. If only. Pride comes before a fall, and all that.
The next night, The Child mucked around in his cot for an hour and a half. AN HOUR AND A SODDING HALF. An hour and a half before he eventually gave in and fell to sleep. I think we heard about 17 rounds of “Crinkle, Crinkle, Little Star” in that space of time, too. And the next three nights weren’t much better either. What had we done?! We’d created a dummy devil of a monster!
This continued for the next ten nights or so. Each night, it took about 45 minutes before he would settle down. He wasn’t crying; he was just mucking around. Then we had two good nights: two nights where he just fell asleep without any bother, and we thought we’d cracked it.
Except we hadn’t bargained for the fact that the next night, he’d see our niece with hers. And that he’d start asking for his again. And even up until this point, we hadn’t quite managed to ditch it for nap times. I must admit, I felt completely conflicted by the whole situation. I think one of my friends summed it up best when she said that when they’d been through the same with their little boy, she felt guilty for giving him something that was convenient to her at the time, and then guilty for taking it away when it was convenient to her.
That night, after Baby Lighty had repeatedly questioned where his nummy was if his cousin still had hers, he became quite distressed at bedtime. There was nothing that Mr Lighty and I could do but admit defeat and give in.
We’ve always been relatively baby led with our parenting approach, with everything from weaning through to playtime, and it felt a bit alien to me to be honest to suddenly be trying to bend him to our will. When I was a brand new Mum, a very lovely online friend of mine said to me to ‘pick your battles’. This has always stuck with me, and when I turned to one of my online mum groups for advice on this front, that was pretty much the prevailing message from this same friend and the other wise ladies that form the group.
Their advice was to be led by him and maybe try again in a few months time, closer to Christmas, when he’ll be two and a half and we can maybe try the Dummy Fairy approach. It’ll be almost Christmas at that point, so it could even be that our Elf on the Shelf brings a present in return for taking the dummy away (although I do need to think about that, as I don’t want Mr Elf to forever be regarded as the Elf that stole Christmas!). It makes sense. But why is it so hard to admit defeat?!
Well I suppose part of it is because Mr and Mrs Lighty are two of the most stubborn people you’ll meet in your life. Ever. We can also be quite determined. And Baby Lighty has definitely inherited this streak from us too…twice over!! But I guess more than that, it comes back to the fact that as parents, parenthood is ever changing. It’s ever evolving, and we don’t always know what to do for the best. But in this case, and as we may well find in points two and three outlined above, we may well need to admit defeat, regroup and try again.
After all, if at first you don’t succeed…wait six months and get Mr Elf to do the work for you?!
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Trust me when I say he’ll give it up when he’s ready. They are annoying things for sure!!! However, they have helped when he needed them too, I’m sure. 🙂
(Hint the wise: Hide them and have him look for them. Make it a game!! Then distract him during the game. If he whines about it later, remind him that he got distracted looking for it. That also helped us with getting our little one to stop using hers. 😉 )
He’s pretty good in that he knows he’s only allowed it in bed, and doesn’t ask for it when he’s not in bed, but it’s such a wrench to take it away for nighttime and naps! I hope you’re right and we don’t end up with a fight on our hands!
I think that “pick your battles” is one of the greatest quotes we need in parenthood. Sometimes you just have to listen to them and follow their lead don’t you? Miss Tot never had a dummy (only because she wasn’t bothered – not because we didn’t try it). She has always had those little teddies with a small soothing blanket attached which she sucks. (“Stinky teddy”). She used to insist on carrying one everywhere but just before she started nursery at 3 we talked to her about putting teddy to bed and tucking him in together on a morning. She was ok with that, just knowing that teddy would be there for her at bedtime. She still has one now to sleep with and she’s nearly 5. I figure who’s it hurting? Nobody. 😉 Just go with what feels right for you and yours lovely. I think you’ve got it spot on. xx
Just me again lovely. *waves* Bringing some #DreamTeam cake. Thanks for linking xx
Thanks lovely! xxx
Thank you lovely. You’re so right. I wish the dummy thing was less of a stigma and I didn’t feel like it was harming his teeth. It definitely isn’t harming his speech, that child can talk for England!! We certainly need to pick our battles at times, don’t we?
Totally agree about picking your battles. With tantrums galore at the moment, we are definitely learning to let the small things pass. I think at 2 they are still so young, and like you say, when you have been baby-led from the beginning, perhaps this is his way of telling you that actually he’s not ready to give up the dummy, and if it’s not harming him, then is it worth the battle? As you know we have a finger sucker, which had really started to bother me but it got so frustrating taking his fingers out of his mouth every few seconds! So I’ve started to chill out about it. I encourage him to take them out when he’s talking so I can understand him, and if we’re somewhere like the farm where he’s touching animals then I keep on top of it, but other than that it’s a comfort for him, so I’m not prepared to take that away when he’s not ready. If he does it till he’s 30 (like so many people LOVE to tell me their kids do!!) then so be it!
I know, it’s so true. We definitely need to pick our battles, this is such a tricky age and as you say they are still so little. I don’t think it’s harming either of our boys’ speech, is it?! Haha!
We finally managed to lose the dummy a few months ago – but it was our second attempt too. There’s no shame in following your instinct and knowing when it’s not the right time. I found that we were a bit all over the place with our story and once we had got that straight (fairies, birds, babies, new toys?!) it was easier to follow through. In fact, she even proudly hung the dummies out for the baby fairies herself. I wrote a post on it, but ultimately, you’ll know when the times right. For us it was causing more harm than good, constant battles over wanting it all the time, and I felt, being detrimental to her speech development (as she had it during the day – my willpower wasn’t strong enough to insist on only for bed!).
Xx
I think I read your post on it and thought back then I’d give it a go! Yes you’re right about getting the story straight actually…will need to try that xxx
We finally managed to lose the dummy a few months ago – but it was our second attempt too. There’s no shame in following your instinct and knowing when it’s not the right time. I found that we were a bit all over the place with our story and once we had got that straight (fairies, birds, babies, new toys?!) it was easier to follow through. In fact, she even proudly hung the dummies out for the baby fairies herself. I wrote a post on it, but ultimately, you’ll know when the times right. For us it was causing more harm than good, constant battles over wanting it all the time, and I felt, being detrimental to her speech development (as she had it during the day – my willpower wasn’t strong enough to insist on only for bed!).
Xx
It’s one of the biggest battles with dummy loving toddlers!
Our first have hers up just after her 3rd birthday, she was dummy obsessed and she did really well to give it up for the “dummy fairies” to take to the newborn babies.
Our 2nd didn’t have a dummy, and our 3rd gave his dummy up at 2 and a half sooo easily, one night I just decided not to give it to him, and he never asked for it ever again! He was always a “take it or leave it” kind of dummy sucker. Good luck on your dummy losing journey! #dreamteam
Thank you! I fear we still have the battle on our hands, but while he’s still this little I’ll leave it a bit. Hopefully he’ll have more understanding soon. #DreamTeam
I keep thinking that I should take the dummy away, but like you say with potty training and the like is it really a big deal? Maybe I’ll wait for the elf too 🙂 #dreamteam
Let’s all wait for the elf! This is a good plan, right?!! #DreamTeam
I don’t know if I was lucky or what …I only had one child – he’s now 19 years old … but I never owned a dummy. I was a bit afraid of them! I’d nannied abroad and kids as old as 6 were walking around with their parents and still had dunnies in their mouths… so my poor little lamb never had one … didn’t seem to miss it and I didn’t have to worry about getting rid of it….he’s a well adjusted young adult in uni now so I don’t think I traumatised him too much (don’t know if he now has a dummy though!).
Haha re: your 19 year old having a dummy now!! I know, I wish I’d not started with the dummy, but I was advised to by my midwives when I was struggling with breastfeeding. It’s hard to know what to do for the best, isn’t it? Thanks so much for stopping by.