How to Break Your 2 year old's Pacifier Habit Without Tears |

This formula for getting rid of our 2 year old’s pacifier was magic! (scroll to the bottom for a quick summary of how to kick the habit quickly)

Caleb’s 2 year old birthday came and went, and his pacifier was still a much loved companion. The pediatrician and the dentist both had encouraged us to drop the habit by 2 years of age due to potential dental issues, but we had David when Caleb was 17 months old, and David never slept more than 30 minutes for the first few months of his life. I was too fearful of having two children not sleeping so, I just let Caleb keep his pacifier. I did try to limit the use to bed time and nap time. I was so afraid of taking his paci away because he was incredibly attached to it, and I feel like when you have a “hard” baby (see this post, this post or this post for more details) it’s almost like you have post traumatic stress disorder when it comes to sleep and transitions. In fact, he never missed a nap until he was 3 because once he was finally on a schedule, I was too afraid to mess it up, that no matter what, every single day we were home for nap time (and we still are 99% of the time).

His 2.5 year well check rolled around and our sweet pediatrician asked me the dreaded question, “Is there still the pacifier habit?” I was ashamed to say yes. Thankfully, she’s incredibly understanding, and she told us what she did with her son. When she told me, I thought, “Well that’s great that it worked for you, but you do not know how hard my son is and how attached he is to his pacifier, and how emotional he is and how many tantrums he throws daily and how often he asks for his paci. There is no way that will work for him.”

And y’all, it was a miracle! What she told me worked like a charm!

So here is what we did:

For a few nights I asked Caleb when putting him to bed, “Do you want to give all your pacifiers away to baby ______ (our friend’s baby’s name) and get a present or keep your paci?” And he said, “My paci” the first couple nights. Then, the third night, to our astonishment, he said “Present!” I asked him if he was sure (I almost tried to talk him out of it and my husband was like this is going to be horrible!) Y’all, he went to sleep! No problem. So the next morning, when he woke up, we praised him and praised him. As soon as church was over, we stopped at Target and he and I went in and walked down the toy aisle, and I asked him what he wanted. He chose a set of his favorite Cars (Disney) characters.

He was so proud! We went to visit our friend’s baby soon after and brought a gift bag full of his pacifiers to her. This way he knew all of his pacifiers were out of the house and that he got to keep his very special present in exchange. The real test came at nap time that afternoon. He cried for just a little bit and asked for his paci once, but I reminded him he got the present instead, and he just went to sleep and slept his normal 2.5-3 hours! He surprised us all! So if you are dreading the paci transition, maybe your fears are misguided. You never know how your kiddo may respond. He or she may surprise you! I would have bet a lot of money that Caleb would not have handled this transition as well as he did. Potty training however, now that’s a whole other story! He still isn’t trained at 3.5 years old, but one day he will be, and I will share how the 3 day potty training method everyone swears by was a major fail for us.

So I guess one of the advantages of waiting to take away your child’s pacifier or soother, you can reason with them. They understand more the idea of bribery.

Some other ideas I’ve heard:

Cut the tips off your child’s pacifier. This wouldn’t have worked for us, as sometimes caleb’s pacifiers would break on the tip and he would cry and thinking they were dirty would say, “Wash it, Mama! Wash it!” The idea is that your kiddo would slowly not want their paci if it didn’t work how they were used to it working.
Take your child to Build a Bear and have them put their pacfiiers inside. Now they can sleep with their bear instead of their pacis.
Throw a big paci party to celebrate that he or she is a “big boy” or “big girl” and no longer need their pacifiers.
Have the “paci-fairy” come take the paci and leave a gift in return

Quick Summary of how to kick the pacifier habit quickly:

Praise the child for giving his or her pacifiers away to a new baby. Then, actually bring the pacifiers to the new baby so that your child knows they are gone and out of the house. Reward their choice with something they really want.

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