How To Get Your Baby Or Toddler Off The Pacifier
I’m sure there will be quite a few parents reading this post who will react with “What?! We don’t want our child off the pacifier! How will we survive?”
The truth is the longer you wait to take away the pacifier the harder it becomes. Its quite a tricky process taking away a pacifier. Either the baby will be too young and not understand and in that case taking the pacifier away is a bad idea or maybe the child would be too old and will have already become too attached to his pacy that taking it away would be impossible.
Some recommend taking the pacifier away when your baby is around six months old. At that age your baby no longer needs to suck and has yet to become attached to it.
My wife wanted me to take the pacifier away from our son before he was six months old but I wanted to wait until he was older. With our daughter, we took the pacifier away from her when she was around two years old.
Well I am happy to say that our two year old is officially off his pacifier. The process this time around was a bit easier than it was with our daughter.
Taking it away
My sister in-law is a pediatric dentist and she told us that the toddler will overcome the need for the pacifier in just three days. While the process is done cold turkey, it does help to restrict pacifier use to nap and bed time only. Except for when they were newborns, our kids were never allowed to have the pacifier any other time during the day.
Baby
Taking a pacifier away from a baby really doesn’t require more than just taking it away. It shouldn’t take more than three days for the baby to get used to sleeping without one. However, there are some key points to be aware of:
- Do not take the pacifier away from the baby the same week you are trying to wean your baby off nighttime feedings or doing something else. Stick to one thing at a time.
- Make sure that there is nothing major in your life going on that week. If you are going on a trip then wait until you come back and have everyone back on schedule. Also, if it’s a week that you are planning on having family visit then do it another week.
- You, as a parent, must be absolutely committed to taking it away. If you arent ready to do it then the baby wont be ready either. You’ll end up giving in at the first sign of your baby’s distress.
- Mom and Dad should do it together as a team for the above reason.
- Weekends are a great time to do it. You could start on a Friday evening and have him off by Monday.
Toddler
While this process is also done cold turkey, it helps to involve the toddler. The best time to take a pacifier away from a toddler is when it needs to be thrown out because it’s all chewed up. It can’t be used anymore for safety reasons and this is a great opportunity to get your toddler involved. You could show your toddler that the pacifier is broken and explain to her that it needs to go to the garbage. You should try to get your toddler to be the one to throw it out.
With our son, we were going to wait until he was about two and a half before taking it away but one night a month before he turned two I noticed that the pacifier was just to damaged to be safe for him to use. I showed him that his ‘pacy’ was broken and it needed to be thrown out. Then I gave it to him and told him to throw it out. He was very reluctant at first but after I kept telling him that it was broken and it wasn’t safe anymore he put it in the garbage. That night when he went to sleep he looked at us and said “pacy broken” and then put his head down and went to sleep. The next morning he woke up and again said “pacy broken.” I responded “Yeah, pacy broken. No more pacy” and that was it.
Our daughter, on the other hand, was crying and crying for her pacifier after we took it away. She even went to take it out of the garbage the next morning but thankfully, we had already moved it somewhere else. Finally, after three days she quieted down and went to bed without any issues.
Some things to be aware of when taking your toddlers pacifier away:
- As with a baby, you will need to be fully committed. If you aren’t your toddler will know it and the process will take much longer than three days.
- When you do take it away make sure that your toddler can’t take it back. You want it to disappear.
- Be strong. Taking a pacifier away can be an emotional process. Although you’ll feel terrible, keep in mind that your helping your toddler not hurting him.
Good luck!
December 4th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
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February 14th, 2009 at 5:13 am
I’m trying to wein my 2 year old off the pacifier but her dad won’t he says it will hurt her teeth or she will suck on her lip is that true
May 24th, 2009 at 1:05 am
My 2 1/2 year old is totally dependant on his papa…one day it dropped in the toilet and i told him to throw it in the garbage.It has been 3 days now and it is truly a struggle he is not the same anymore he wants me to hold him now(in place of papa) considering giving it back, but it has been 4 days already. Confused what should i do?
May 24th, 2009 at 5:15 am
I guess the question is did he have the pacifier all the time or only for bed? If your son had it all day long then it will be a much more difficult process. It really helps to first restrict the use of the pacifier to nap and bedtime only. The 3 day rule will really only work well if the use is for these times only. Otherwise it can be more difficult as you are stating. keep me posted.
July 21st, 2009 at 3:21 pm
I have a five year old daughter who cannot sleep without her paci! She keeps it under her pillow only. There’s no other issue other than the fact that she needs it to fall asleep. I want to completely rid her of it, but can’t muster up enough strength to battle through a few unresting nights by taking it away from her. Any suggestions out there?
September 1st, 2009 at 12:03 am
My husband and I came up with an idea to get our son (2 1/2) off his paci - with a little planning and preparation, it worked like a charm! In November we talked off and on about Christmas, Santa, etc and we told our son that if he put all his pacifiers in his stocking, Santa would fill it with goodies! Then we explained how there were so many babies all over the world that didn’t have pacis and Santa needed our help. We talked about it and prepared him for weeks in advance. On Christmas eve day, we had a scavenger hunt around the house to collect all the pacis; then Christmas eve, he put all of them in his stocking. When he woke up Christmas morning, we reminded him to check his stocking. It was filled with little toys, candy, and other knick knack fun stuff —- NO PACIS!!! At first, he was a little shocked, then we reminded him that Santa took them to give all the little babies (…he wasn’t a baby anymore) and Santa gave us chocolate, etc in exchange for our pacis. He was so happy with his new ‘items’, he didn’t care! However, we did have to remind him at naptime/bedtime why Santa took our pacis and how much of a big helper he was, but only for a couple weeks. He now sleeps with a stuffed animal - that’s it. We were even able to bypass thumb-sucking!!!
Hope this helps…
December 19th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
I read the 3 days of crying after taking a paci away, my daughter just turned 2 is now sleeping in a big girl bed and trying to potty train……. only has her paci in bed and always has but the past 2 weeks she seems to be wanting it more often while she is awake when she gets upset and so on and so forth so now i really want to get rid of it! Gonna try to get her to wrap it up to give to Santa next week……. figure its gonna be a rough 3 days as she only uses it to fall asleep if you go in to check on her during the nite its usually on the bed next to her! Any other ideas to make this easier on her? Or on us as im sure there will be alot of screaming till she falls asleep that is if she does fall asleep! If she wakes during the nite and cant find it she will cry till we get up and find it for her…….. any ideas will be greatly appreciated!
January 6th, 2010 at 10:19 am
I have 3 year old twins, both on pacifiers, only some use during the day, both are very dependant. TIPS PLEASE I am losing my mind with this subject, wanna get them off this weekend.
January 6th, 2010 at 10:52 am
Amy, my suggestion is to try what I wrote in the post above. But if you are going to do it make sure you are committed to doing it and expect that it will be a bit difficult Friday and Saturday night. There will probably be a lot of crying for the pacifier.
If you give in to their crying you could try again in a month or so.
January 8th, 2010 at 9:05 pm
My son is 27 months and we took his paci away 8 days ago. It’s like having a newborn again. He has been waking up every couple hours screaming for it both at night and nap. He only used it in his bed prior to taking it away. We told him he was a big boy and we needed to send it to his baby cousin in cleveland. He understands that we sent them away. I’m at my wits end but do not want to give them back. HELP. SO TIRED.
January 27th, 2010 at 4:18 am
Tara, I am going through the same situation with my 36 month old. We took her paci away 7 nights ago and she wakes up at least 3 times/night screaming and upset, not asking for her paci, but just does not sleep well when she used it. I’m extremely tired and hope this cycle ends soon. Do you have support? Very important! A good book that I’ve been reading is “Good Night Sleep Tight” by Kim West. Stay strong and wish you the best!
February 24th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
For those of you who are struggling: try replacing the pacifier with a more “healthy” soothing method.
Our 24-month old has been restricted to pacifier use only during naps and bedtime for almost a year, and we decided now would be a good time to wean her off it. The first two nights she asked repeatedly for her “ba ba”, and she sounded devastated, like a good friend had been taken away from her. At that point I started to reconsider taking it away…it just didn’t feel right taking this item (somewhat arbitrarily) that she had become so attached to. She bawled for about 5 minutes and fell asleep. Same routine the next night. She has never been terribly attached to a stuffed animal, so on the third night I offered to let her pick a stuffed animal to sleep with her, as if it was a new privilege. She initially didn’t like the idea, but eventually she grabbed a teddy bear, cuddled up with it and went to sleep without a word or a tear.