We Have A Binky Situation

Emery is attached to her binky (aka pacifier). Like really really attached. As some of you know she just turned two. So, my husband and I decided that it was time to get rid of the binky. We don't want to be the parents with a child still attached to her binky as she enters kindergarten. At first, it seemed like she was doing okay. The babysitter helped us out and stopped giving it to her during the day. At home she would only asks for it when she was ready for a nap. At night she usually falls asleep and takes it out herself so I figured it was okay to allow her to have it at bedtime too. We went a few weeks like this so she would slowly get used to the idea of not having it around as much before we tried taking it away completely.

 Well, it finally came time for us to take it away at night. And it’s not working out exactly as planned. To say she gets mad is a HUGE understatement. She starts crying, screaming, and kicking if we don’t give it to her. And to be quite honest, there’s only so much of the tantrum that we can take before we end up giving the binky back to her. Now you might think that we “give in” too easily, or we’re just a big pair of "push overs". But we don’t and we aren’t. We had originally set out thinking that she would just end up crying herself to sleep. A few tears, a little bit of a tantrum, and then she’d be out. And then we assumed that she’d eventually just learn that she wasn’t going to get it back. Ha! We were so very very wrong. Her last episode lasted 45 minutes, before she started gasping for air. Did you read that?? 45 MINUTES! Her hair was soaked in tears; her face was all red and blotchy. She had been screaming/crying with only a few breaks in between. And that was one of her short fits. 

I do have to hand it to her though. She’s a persistent little one, that’s for sure. Takes after her dad mom in the stubborn department. So now, I have to figure out another approach. Any one out there have any ideas? I’m running out of them pretty fast. I’ve tried snipping the ends, hiding them, and pretending like I threw them away. Nothing seems to work. And this mom needs wants sleep. So having to listen to her cry and scream for over thirty minutes after lights out is completely out of the question. Call me selfish.