That's right, folks, we've finally taken the plunge. We have removed binkies from Brooklyn's life forever. This girl is seriously attached to her binkies, and it's been a long time coming, but we finally did it. A really good friend of mine (who teaches preschool and kindergarten and is in my opinion a master of early childhood teaching) told me that she read somewhere that if you take a binkie away from a child before or by 18 months, they don't really have as hard a time with it because their brains aren't developed enough to realize you're "taking something away" from them. However, if you wait longer than that they realize what you're doing and it can affect them negatively. So, she's always let her kids keep their binkies until they were 3 and could make the choice for themselves. Well, I was all for it! I decided if she did that it was a good enough reason for me to let Brooklyn keep her beloved binkie. Well, she is now 2 years 3 months old, and we've noticed that her already pronounced overbite (she has her dad's Simpson mouth for sure!) was becoming even more pronounced. This worried us a lot. We have been telling her everyday that big girs don't need binkies, and usually during the day she wouldn't need it (just for naps and night time) so she was getting prepared for making the choice to give it up. But because we decided her dental woes (which are already a sad state in this family--we all have bad genes when it comes to teeth) outweighed the need to keep her binkie fixation going, we finally just took it away. It really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be! She has been taking her naps and sleeping at night without it. She doesn't sleep as soundly because she wakes up screaming (she did this at least 3 times last night). We used to just be able to pop the binkie back into her mouth and she'd fall deeply asleep...not anymore. So, as soon as we can get her over this high-pitched-middle-of-the-night screaming, we'll be totally free and clear of the binkie! (Lesson learned? Take it away before 18 months!)
1 comment:
My children all did the binkie thing, except for Staci. She took her two middle fingers and rejected the binkie. So, I consulted my younger sister who had dealt with finger sucking, and she said the same thing: "15-18 months is the magic time"
So when Staci was fifteen months, I used the dreaded ointment on the fingers and within three days she was weaned off the fingers.
I just discovered your blog site from Lana's page. I loved the Greer pictures, and all the fun activities you ladies planned and carried out. Great pictures.
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