The Great Pacifier Dilemma: Solved!

About seven months ago, I wrote a post about taking Jack's pacifier away. You may recall that I had a lot of concerns about getting rid of the sucky, namely that Jack's awesome sleeping would be disrupted. The fear continued as Jack's awesome sleep continued, and I really wasn't sure how I'd ever get rid of the darn thing. At his 30 month appointment, the doctor actually told me I might want to wait until after our big move, since there were a lot of changes coming up and it might be useful on the airplane. The three year deadline was rapidly approaching, and with potty training and moving Jack to a big boy bed still on the horizon, I was feeling a little overwhelmed (the move to Russia in eight weeks probably wasn't helping).

And then, last week, Jack decided to take matters into his own hands. Er, teeth.

It was around 9:30 pm and Jack was being unusually loud and whiny in his crib (he "goes to bed" at 7:30 but it usually takes him until around 9 to fall asleep). When I went up to see what he was doing, Jack handed me his pacifier and said, "Wash the sucky, Mommy." That seemed like an odd request, even for a child as eccentric as mine. When I glanced down at the pacifier, it was clear that no amount of washing was going to fix this problem. Jack had ripped the tip of the sucky off with his teeth.

"Well," I said to Jack, "it's 9:30, we have no other pacifiers, and you broke this one. So I guess you just have to sleep without it for tonight." Jack didn't have much to say to that. I got him some cold water, sang him a song, and left. About half an hour later, Jack went to sleep.

Still, I figured he'd wake up at some point during the night and freak out when he noticed his sucky was gone. But 7 am rolled around and I realized I hadn't heard a peep from Jack. When I went into his room to get him up, he told me the sucky was broken and needed to be thrown away. So he marched to the trash can, opened the lid, and threw it out himself.

Sarah and I throwing our suckies into the trash compactor on our 4th birthday.

 

It all seemed a little too easy. Surely nap time would be a disaster, I told myself. But lo and behold, after fifteen minutes of fussing, Jack fell asleep. The same thing that night. And the next nap. And that night. Etc. Here we are on night day five, and Jack just went down for his nap without a hitch.  He asked about his sucky a few times the first two days, but I reminded him that he'd thrown it away, and that was that.

I'd like to say this all went so smoothly because I'm some kind of parenting genius, but let's be honest: it was luck. Or maybe a combination of Jack being ready and being personally responsible for the sucky's demise. Whatever the case, it's a good reminder that the things I spend so much time and energy worrying about -- and believe me, there are a lot -- usually work out just fine on their own.