Pacifiers and Separation Anxiety
OK first and foremost I am not one to use pacifiers. Seems weird to me and I forget about pacifiers until I head out into public and see parents at the store with their kids and they have a pacifier stuck in their kid’s mouth. A pacifier is to pacify who? The child or the parent?
Stop talking and suck on this for a while!
All of my children have gone without pacifiers and some suck their thumbs and others don’t at all. When were pacifiers introduced into the world and for what purpose? Somebody enlighten me on this.
What brought me to this short rant is an article on the Parenting Toddlers blog called Pacifier Separation - A Major Trauma of Toddlerhood. In the author’s case she used a pacifier with her child due to certain issues regarding the child being in and out of the hospital.
See I guess I don’t mind if this is the case. And frankly I don’t care whether you shove a pacifier in your child’s mouth or not but I just don’t do it. But I see more people than not shoving a pacifier into their children’s mouth. I might feel better about it if I didn’t see parents shoving these things into their mouth just to keep them quiet. I dunno…
Do you use them on your kids? Why or why not?
Tags: anxiety, babies, children, kids, pacifiers, Parenting, toddlers, traumaRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Parenting
12 opinions for Pacifiers and Separation Anxiety
Jennifer
Apr 11, 2007 at 12:07 pm
I totally understand your thoughts on this. I for one didn’t want to use a pacifier at all with my son. Unfortunately, the hospital gave him one right after birth, and later, when he was in the hospital for ten days, he could not keep anything down. In that case it was more of a “trick” to try to help ease his hunger and help him during scary things like x-rays and blood drawings. We’re in the process now of getting rid of it, and will most likely not use one on a second child when the time comes. I can’t stand watching parents who shove in a pacifier just to keep their child quiet!
Julie
Apr 11, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Tried a pacifier with our oldest daughter April. I was terrified it would snap off in her mouth, so I tested it daily. All sorts of people told me horror stories! Deformed mouth and teeth, rotten teeth ~ but I was worried about the stupid plastic part.
At about two weeks of age for April, the pacifier failed the test…snapped right off into my hand as I tested it.
that was the end to all pacifiers for all our kiddos~
Jared
Apr 11, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Our son used a pacifier for less than a year. We mainly didn’t want it to become a crutch, in lieu of learning when to stay quiet, to calm himself, etc.
I do raise my eyebrows when I see a three- or four-year-old with a pacifier.
Tony
Apr 12, 2007 at 7:54 am
Pacifiers have been linked to impaired speech development. I know what you are saying Jared I have seen some kids who still suck their thumbs at age 5 and older. It is really a habit that should be broken well before school.
steve
Apr 12, 2007 at 11:09 am
I still catch my 7 year old daughter sucking her thumb. She does it usually when she is watching a movie or something.
Tony
Apr 12, 2007 at 11:16 am
There are worse habits to have. I am sure she will outgrow it.
steve
Apr 12, 2007 at 11:18 am
My wife sucked her thumb until she was 15. Well that is what her brothers tell me ;)
Mike
Apr 12, 2007 at 2:23 pm
We tried to get our son to use it for about two days when he was very young. He screamed a little more than we were ready for. He never learned to hold it in his mouth and it was more work for us than it was worth so we gave up and never tried again.
His sister never really needed one during that time, but now that they are four, I often think about seeing if she’ll start using one when my head starts to hurt from the constant chatter.
Karen is Thrifty
Apr 12, 2007 at 6:14 pm
My daughter used one until she was 2 1/2. I hated seeing it in her mouth, but she came home from the hospital screaming and things have only recently gotten better (she will be 4 this summer). We’re having her evaluated for some things. If it weren’t for the pacifier I might have gone insane!!! No, her pacifier didn’t hurt her speech or development. Before she was two years old she knew all of her shapes and letters, she spoke in complete sentences, and had a vocabulary of over a thousand words. She talked like a 4 year old. I know that there are some kids that don’t talk because they have a pacifier, but that wasn’t her case.
My son used one a little until he was 6 months old. He actually broke himself from it.
Eric
Apr 15, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Like Julie commented, the hospital is who gave it to our boy first. We never really discussed it beforehand, but just went with it. He just turned two, and only uses it during naps and sleeping (he knows that it stays in the crib). My wife was a late thumbsucker so I think that’s why we kept using it. Soon we’ll break him of using it during sleep time though.
Karen is Thrifty
Apr 15, 2007 at 3:51 pm
I don’t understand hospitals giving babies a pacifier without discussing it with the parents. They shouldn’t be allowed to do that.
I think it is easier to break a child of a pacifier than of a thumb. Each year I usually have a preschooler that comes to school sucking their thumb, but never a pacifier.
James
Apr 16, 2007 at 11:38 am
Our almost 4 y/o boy still sucks his thumb and has since he could hold his hand steady. Now he usually does it when watching a movie, sleeping, or staring out the car window in deep thought. He’s aware that no other kids in his preschool class suck their thumbs and says he won’t anymore pretty soon.
Our 15 m/o never sucked her thumb and threw the pacifier at us when we would put it in her mouth.
Every child is different.
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: