weaning off pacifiers

[csmuds]

Anybody have some good tips for weaning off pacifiers? My 19 mo kids only get them when they sleep, but ideally I'd like to be done with them by the time they're 2. I've heard of cutting the tips bit by bit, does that actually work? Is 2 an unreasonable expectation?

[xxplosive]

my daughter is 2 and a half and we just got her off of the binky...it was so hard because she was really attached to it.. first we had to stop it at nap time, then no more taking it to daycare. One night we let her get super tired to where she fell asleep without it but she woke up in the middle of the night crying for it.

eventually we just had to go cold turkey. it only takes about 3 days for them to stop thinking about it...but there will be lots of tears...

[Makena]

Cold turkey worked for us. 2 nights of horrible bed time, but after that he forgot all about it.

[GailGoldie]

since 15mo my boys (all 3 of them) only had them in bed/naps (only at home, not at daycare).

We waited until a few months before 3yo for all of them - since they slept so well with them and they were really their only comfort items - we saw no reason to rock the boat. And close to 3 they understand the "paci fairy" and getting presents = exciting to them.

So, the paci fairy came- brought them cool presents - they were happy - never an issue after that.

[csmuds]

I've heard about waiting until 3 since they communicate better, so I'll feel better knowing we won't be the "only ones". I think we could handle 2-3 bad nights when it's time. Thanks for the input!

[psyck]

We went cold turkey. It went really well for us. Good luck!

[statlerwaldorf]

DD went cold turkey at 18 months. It really wasn't bad at all. The first night she was a little fussy, but by day 2 she had forgotten all about it. I would do it now. DD has become a lot more particular about sleep and things when she was 2+.

[anonnani]

If its only used for sleep at the moment then your almost all the way there I would just go cold turkey from there. But I think I had better luck on this since my son understood "all gone" in relation to things that had finished or were done. So I used that as a simple "paci all gone" for him to get the idea that it "wasn't there to be had". But it did result in 3 or 4 nights of crying before it was easier to put him down without it. And so far I am a month in to no pacifier land and he still asks randomly but is ok and doesn't freak out when I say "no more paci" or something to that affect.

[jcsntms06]

We basically cut cold turkey. We had been telling DD that we were giving all the paci's back to the NICU and that seem to go over very well, and then we got rid of them cold turkey. She cried for a few days looking for it, but after those three days, she was fine.

[melissa]

We had planned to use the method where you cut the tip off and gradually cut more off but at the time that we planned to do it she came down with hand, foot and mouth and it hurt her to suck on the pacifier. We went to the grocery store, told her we lost it and she was good to go after that.

[heythere]

We just went through this with DD (2 yrs, 4mths) within the last couple of weeks. She was using it at bedtime, naptime, and once or twice a day for comfort. We started by showing her a YouTube video of Elmo singing bye bye to his binky since he's a big kid and spent a few days making a big deal about it. Then we cut the tip off the binky thinking that we'd cut it a little more each day until she couldn't suck on it. Surprisingly, the first time she saw it with the end cut off, she said she didn't want it. She's asked for it a handful of times since then, and we show it to her which reminds her that she doesn't want it anymore. It was way easier than I thought it would be.