Great Ideas

Do you know any babies? My sister told her little girl a week or so in advance that it is soon going to be time for her to give her nuks to a baby. They counted down the days and then put the nuks in a box and wrapped it and gave it to my son who was just a few weeks old. It worked! She took her to the store and bought a big girl toy afterwards and after a couple of sad nights, they were finished. Good luck!
(My kids wouldn't ever take a nuk despite many attempts by me...I am still so envious of the moms who can pop the nuk in the child's mouth and voila - all better!)

We had the same problem with my son. Someone suggested to us that the nukker fairy come to our house. We talked about it for a few days before hand and decorated a box to put the nukker in. Then the nukker fairy comes and takes the nuks away and gives them to babies who need them and brings a present for your child for being a big kid with no nuk. It worked really well for us and and if he asked for his nuk we just reminded him that babies who needed them had them now and he was a big boy that didn't. Hope that helps

I know a lot of people who used "The Binky Fairy" effectively. Sort of a cross between Santa and the tooth fairy- your child gets to choose a particularly desired toy, then they receive it when they give up their binky. With whatever ritual you like added in.

The Binky Fairy didn't work at our house, though. So, first we narrowed the pacifier down to naps and bedtimes only, then we had to go cold turkey. Extra stories and cuddles at bedtime and talks about being Too Big for a Binky. It was hard for about a week, but then became progressively easier. He recently got ahold of a binky while I was babysitting a younger child- put it in his mouth, pulled it out, studied it, then announced that it was for babies and he's a big boy, then crammed it (oh, the hygeine issues!) into the younger
child's mouth.

Our son was about 2 1/2 years old when we did this. Would have done it a year earlier, but a long-distance move and various other major life changes were going on, and it seemed like one change too many, so we let it go. For what it's worth, my father-in-law is an oral surgeon and didn't think that it was a major deal in terms of mouth developement.

Good luck!

M.

I had gotten a great tip from a child's magazine...What I did was cut off the tip of the pacifier. Then I showed it to my daughter and told her it was broken. I don't know why, but this seemed to do the trick. When she asked for it over the next day or so, I just showed it to her again and repeated that it was broken. It only took her a day to get over it, and there was no crying or getting upset at all. She just accepted the fact that it was broken and moved on. I was amazed at how easily this worked!

Good luck!

Hello, our neighbor's son had a nuk and they came up with a great idea. They had him gather all his nuk's, put them in a bag, and give them to a "baby" who needed them since he was a "big boy" now. They talked about it for a week and then brought over all the nuk's to our house to give to our son.

Then he got to go shopping and pick out a big boy present - he got a Superman blanket! He ended up feeling great about himself because he did a good, nice thing for someone else! The mom said he never asked for them again - good luck :)

When my son was near two his teeth started pushing forward from biteing no his nuk, so what I did was one day cut a very small hole off the tip, then the next day cut it a little bigger and so on until he just looked at it one day and threw it on the ground and didn't ask for it again. Good luck!

Hi R. - when our son was 2 he was still using his nuk for naps and night time. So we explained to him that he was big now and didn't need it, but there were small babies that did. So we tied it to a balloon and he let it go up to the sky, to Heaven - so God could give it to new baby boys who needed it! WORKED LIKE A CHARM! That night when he went to bed he didn't ask for it, instead he told us that he sent it to babies that needed it. Good Luck, I know its tough!!

My son was a nuk kinda guy too. I waited untill he was almost 2 and then tried the "your a big boy" thing - didn't work. I tried to cut off tip thing - didn't work. Finally I stoped finding them for him. He had a habbit of throwing them down when he was done and instead of picking them up and putting them somewhere I (or he) could find them I started throwing them away. We were down to just one and I told him that he needed to keep track of that last one. He did for a week or so then he was back to his usual trick of throwing it down somewhere and I would not look for it when it was sleep time. He found it a few times (after much looking and crying) and then one day he decided that he was too tired to look for it. I later found it and hid it. That was the end of the nuk. When he would ask for it I would remind him that it was lost and that he needed to look for it if he wanted it, he never did. He did try to put in other babies nuks (including his sister's) but they were not the same I guess and he spit them out. This process took a few weeks. Good luck !

What we did for our stubborn little girl was cut the tip off of her nuk. She couldn't get the sucking stimulation that she had had with it being whole and didn't like it. She would put it in her mouth and try and figure out what was wrong with the nuk. She cried for a while when I would hand her the cut nuk but it stopped after a couple of days.

Good luck.