This post is about three months in the making, mostly because we weren't sure how things would go when we finally took away Ethan's most prized possession - his collection of 5 pacifiers. And partly because we had to admit to everyone that he'd been using a pacifier two years longer than when our pediatrician advised us to take it away.
Exhibit A: Ethan's last days with his pacifiers, looking content and not at all aware of what was about to come. This is like when you've fallen asleep on the couch on a cold day with a warm blanket and a dog curled up next to you. Now imagine someone's about to yank off the blanket and throw ice cold water on you....that's what we think is about to happen to Ethan's world.
We'd read up on a few methods to removing the pacifier and decided on the "Babies in Need" approach. We told Ethan that when he was born, a child turning three years old chose him to receive their pacifier. It was a great life cycle and now it was his turn to chose a baby to have his pacifiers.
We printed out pictures of babies and he got to choose which pacifiers that Baby Joe, Baby Sophia, Baby Evan and twins Baby Roberta and Roberto would get. We then put them in a box and mailed them off the the babies.
A few pics below of Ethan really taking his time in assigning who got which pacifier:
So THEN we created this reward system....a star for every night he successfully went without a pacifier. After 8 weeks he'd get a reward. Subawards for each week. And on and on....
We'd created this amazingly overworked system trying to prepare our more emotionally charged child for this traumatic life change. All this investment only to revisit a lesson that every parent wrestles with - things never work out the way you think.
Ethan had no real reaction to us taking them away. He told a few people he mailed them away, put a few stars on a chart, but otherwise, seemed uninterested in our super jazzy Chart/Subchart Reward System that we so tirelessly worked on.
We're happy to report that we are officially three months pacifier free!!! Next up...getting rid of their favorite blankets. Wish us luck!
