Pacififer Use During Cry It Out

My son used a pacifier to sleep, and I took it away at about 1 year. That was a big mistake because he found his fingers and then his thumb. At the age of 3 he developed protruding front upper teeth and I thought oh no, braces. But, we let it go until he was about 11 or 12 and his teeth continued to move back into place. He is now 40 and never had braces and his teeth are beautiful and very straight. It is amazing how we think we need to do something right now, and we need to relax and let the child be happy with whatever he/she wants and then let them ween themselves at an age when they are ready. I hope this settles your fears about baby's teeth.

I have not read the book... did some cry it out but my daughter was very easy on us and learned to self soothe. My daughter did learn young on how to grab that nuk and put it back in, during cry it out I did not go in and pop in the nuk (that is when my daughter started to get it herself and pop it in). I honestly wished that I took the nuk away earlier between 10-12 months because it ended up doing damage to my daughters jaw/teeth structure (see below for why).

My daughter is now 3 years old and she used that nuk to self soothe herself to sleep which creates a problem when taking it away because then she has to REALLY learn how to put her self asleep without a nuk. We just had our first dentist trip and since I waited till she was 3 years old to take the nuk away she does have some teeth/jaw problems due to the nuk... so something else to think about when you will stop offering the nuk it does make life easier but might also cause the child the have braces later on in life (I learned this the hard way).

If your going to use CIO I would just take the pacifier away now at the same time.

Hi S S In my parenting days there was no such thing as cry it out, and pacifires were not as popular as they are now, I always rocked and sand my baby's to sleep, and i think that helped them fall a sleep feeling loved and secure, appose to falling a sleep from a crying state. As far as pacifirfes go I never used them, they are very habit forming and not one easy to break unless you just throws it away at some point, also if you teach your child that something in their mouth for soothing, may create a child who become an emotional eater, just something to think about. J. L,

Oh please. I've seen no studies that state that pacifier-use encourages emotional eating, but I have seen several studies that say that it helps prevent SIDS. It is habit-forming, but kids that don't use pacis often suck their thumbs or other fingers - oral fixation is standard in children this young.

Having said that, we ran into the same problem with our son at about this age, and you can approach it two ways. You can wean your son off of that paci at this point, or you can get up and put it back in his mouth until he is old enough to do that for himself. Unfortunately, there is no easier solution that I know about, but if it makes you feel any better, we decided to just place the paci back in our son's mouth for the sake of our own sleep, and when he was about 11-months-old, he learned to put his own paci in his mouth.

Good luck.