Giving up the Pacifier - Chicago,IL

My daughter is 2.5 and we were having the same battle with her wanting a paci all day. So we started to tell her that we have to set the "paci timer" (egg timer) and she could have her paci when it went off. (5 minutes, then 10, then more...) Most of the time, she had forgotten by the time the timer went off. If she remembered later, we just set it again and started over!
That got us down to just using the paci for bedtime. She started chewing on her pacis, so we tried going the route of telling her there we no more at bedtime because they were broken. She just started to suck her fingers, which is way harder to deal with in my opinion! So we still let her have it at bedtime for now. We tried talking about giving the pacis to the fairy or a baby, but her response was "no way!"

With our daughter, rather than have a mysterious "fairy" sneak into our house and TAKE the paci to give to another child.... I suggested that my daughter take all her paci's and trade them for some toys. (The idea came from the bakery clerk who happened to be decorating my daughter's 2nd birthday cake). So, after we had birthday cake and everything, about 2 hours before bedtime, we gathered up all her paci's and put them in a big ziploc bag (gallon sized) and off we went... back to the bakery. Yes, ON her 2nd birthday.

The lady at the bakery was SO nice and encouraging to my daughter. She asked my daughter which toys she liked... she spread out several cake topper items for her to look at. (Yes, the little kit things they use to put on the cakes--Winnie the Pooh, Dora, etc).
She liked several, and she let her pick three in exchange for the bag of paci's. Daughter had to hand them over. The clerk held the bag while daughter chose the items she wanted. Then, the clerk told her to go empty the ziploc bag (the paci's) into the garbage can so she could put her new toys in the bag.
Daughter did so and then proudly walked around and back out to the car to leave, carrying her new toys.
She really never looked back.

So, my suggestion is this: give her some power/control. Don't make it up to her WHEN it happens, but let HER do the giving them up part. Throw them away, or trade them away or whatever... but let HER do it. You just arrange the WHEN.
:)

With my daughter(who is 3.5) I cut it down to only when laying in bed around age 2.5 and about 2 months ago she freely gave them up with no problem at all. Try it this way and if by 3.5 she is still not willing to give it up i would go for the paci fairy. Give her a few months with it just for bedtime( this means you have to say no during the day) before you try to put her down without it at night.

My youngest (now 8) LOVED her paci. We started the Only at Bedtime rule when she turned 3, hoping she would gradually give it up (my oldest gave hers up at 7 months and my middle daughter rejected it outright from birth, so I had no real experience with pacifier addiction!). Realized when she was about to turn 4 that it wasn't going to happen without some encouragement on our part, so the Paci Fairy came the night of her 4th birthday, took the Pacis (there were a few) to give to a new baby with no paci, and left a Barbie Mariposa as her gift for 'donating' her pacis. She had been wanting that Barbie for a while so she was overjoyed and I literally NEVER heard about the paci again...it was actually kind of weird, I expected her to cry for it at bedtime for at least a day or two, but NOTHING. Hope it works as well for you as it did for us!

My son by age 1 only had the paci at naps and bed time. Then he started biting them, and Daycare told him.. no more (he called it a me me) so they said ME ME all gone, broke.. That worked for nap at daycare.

That night we said the same thing he aked for it a few more times and went to sleep.

after day 3 it was gone never to be seeen agian.

My daughter is 19 months and still has hers. Mostly nap time and bed time.. sometimes she will have one , but it usually revolves around being tired.

We will do about the same thing with her. At daycare .. she only gets it when she is sleeping.. At home she only wants it when she is going down to bed or in the car.. and somtimes she does not even want it then, but I think she thinks that she will not have to go to sleep if she does not take it ,lol.

I would start with taking it away except at nap/bed/car time.. then decided how to get rid of it from there.

You need to determine what your limits are and then enforce them.

For me - I let her control when she gave it up for bedtime and nap. But I didn't let it off the bed.

If you're not able to set boundaries and enforce them, then you might be better off to take it away completely.

However- you are going to have to help her learn how to build another habit.... one that you DO like. She'll actually needs 2:

1. To replace the *habit* of having it whenever she wants
2. To replace the paci for "self-soothe" at bedtimes or when she is hurt/sad etc. This is a good time to introduce a bear / blanket etc. and teach her how to use that to soothe herself instead of the paci.

I have twins and one was done a month or so before the other.

We first started by enforcing they only be used at bedtime/naptime. If they wanted them during the day, then they had to stay in their beds with them. They were in cribs and weren't climbers so this was easy to enforce, but if you are consistent, you can enforce this with a non-crib room.

Then, they started chewing through them on a regular basis so that pretty much forced us to get rid of them as I was not going to buy a new pacifier every 2-3 days. One of them was chewing through first so we just cut off the nipple and if he asked for one, we gave him the cut off one. He'd try it, look at it funny, and toss it. They had different color pacifiers so we didn't have too much trouble with the one trying to steal the other one's pacifier.

When the second one started to chew through it was tougher because he was definitely more attached. We told him it was broken and didn't have anymore. The first few nights were a little rough, but he understood what broken meant and seemed to accept it. We also tried to give him some other stuffed animal or lovey when he went to bed as a friend instead of the pacifier. I'd say that he stopped asking for it after a couple of days.

My kids were around 2 when we got rid of them. If you do go kind of cold turkey with them make sure that you really get rid of them or cut them all so you cannot give in. If you do the paci fairy, a trade-in, or put them in a build-a-bear animal, also make sure you have them all.

Just cut the nipple part on all of them. Too old to be walking around with it during the day. Problem end solved. They just all broke and no money to buy new ones.

Let her keep it until she's ready to give it up. Try to limit it to just bedtime, that would be the goal, not cold turkey. She is going to be going through some changes and would need it even more during that time so you'll just have a much larger battle on your hands.

It's not hurting her and if she decides to suck her thumb or a finger instead you'll be wishing she was still using the pacifier that could be weaned away, not connected to her body.