There comes a time in every young child’s life when the trappings of babyhood have to be left behind. But weaning your toddler or preschool-aged child off his beloved dummies, blankie, bottle or even breastfeed can involve a traumatic and thoroughly tantrum- and tear-ridden turn of events for your child – and everyone else within hearing distance.
Child psychologist Kimberley O’Brien agrees that weaning kids from their comforters is a big deal for many parents, and says it’s something she often helps to deal with at her Quirky Kid Clinic in Sydney.
“It’s always good to involve your child in the process,” she says. She suggests talking through the reasons for weaning with your child. Preparing the way and highlighting the benefits will go a long way towards lessening the blow.
As my own daughter’s third birthday hurtled towards me last year, she seemed to become more attached to her dummy, and didn’t look as though she would be ready to ‘grow out of it’ any time soon. We introduced the concept of the Dummy Fairy – a magical and mythical being who took dummies away from big children and gave them to new babies – but she wasn’t having any of it.
“Babies don’t need my dummy,” our daughter told us confidently.
Score: toddler – 1, parents – 0.
Sometimes it’s the parents who rely on the comforter far longer than the child actually needs it, Kimberley says. “Leaving it until 3 to start the process is leaving it a bit late,” she advised. Oops. “By then, children can get really independent and single-minded.”
So I noticed – a bit late.

Kimberley says that at 18 months of age children tend to take notice of their parents more and the whole process is often easier to manage.

“Parents often follow their own habits and routines, reaching for the dummy when they could offer a story or a favourite toy, so you do have to think about changing your child’s routine around a little.”

By getting your child accustomed to a little more flexibility around bedtime routines from an earlier age, it’s possible you can make weaning from comforters a less traumatic experience, Kimberley suggests.

Going cold turkey
Some parents swear by the cold turkey method, and if you time it right this approach is often relatively quite painless. Brad and Amber went for broke and weaned both 6-month-old son Nathanael and 3-year-old daughter Jaeda from their beloved comforters at the same time.
Nathanael was a reflux baby and wouldn’t go to sleep without his dummy but was constantly losing it during the night, so both Brad and Amber were up and down on dummy-locating missions all night long.
And it was time for Jaeda to finally lose what was left of her beloved but tattered blanket.
“We knew we’d get no sleep any
way we did it, so we decided to nail them both on the same night, no
sleep but no mercy,” Brad recalls.
“Our poor girl felt she’d lost her oldest friend (true in a sense, because the blanket was a gift from birth!) and she reacted accordingly,” he says.
Nathanael barely slept at all that first night either. Amber and Brad
had decided to prepare themselves for a week of sleepless nights and constant onslaughts but, in the end, they say the second night wasn’t
too bad and by the third night, both their children slept all night.
“Turns out there’s something to be said for sticking to your guns!”
says Brad, who added that both children still sleep like angels (though a year later, with a new baby daughter, sadly it’s sleepless nights all over again for Mum and Dad).

And the blanket is in a safe place, ready to hand back when Jaeda’s ready. “Maybe when she’s 21,” Brad jokes.

Enlisting invisible allies
While blankies and battered toys can be tolerated until children get a bit older, dummies are one baby fad that most parents really want to see the end of. And the Dummy Fairy is starting to become almost as popular among Australian parents as the Tooth Fairy, says Holly, who learned about the idea from an online forum.When her daughter Evie had just turned 2 (and was coping with a new baby brother and the recent loss of her bedtime bottle), Holly decided it was time for the dummy to disappear.“We had a one-off visit from a fairy who leaves a special treat for giving

up your beloved dummy. It worked really well for us,” Holly says.

The Dummy Fairy visited little Evie one day while she was having her afternoon nap, and sprinkled magic fairy glitter all over her rug as well as big gold stars and a gift of a fairy Barbie doll with a card and special fairy poem (see below)

Never say never
Jane King is the founder of the Parenting Australia online forum and says she tried every trick she could think of to persuade her daughter Emily to give up the dummy, to no avail.
“I thought she’d still be bringing her dummy to school,” admits Jane. In the end though, bribery won the day. Jane spotted a huge teddy bear while shopping with Emily and promised her she would buy her the teddy if she went one whole week without using the dreaded dummy.

“Now the giant teddy sleeps with her at night instead of the dummy!”

Evie’s dummy fairy poem

When evie swapped her dummy for a fairy barbie doll, her mum Holly wrote the following poem in the tiny pink fairy writing on a glittery card:

Dear evie,
From my fairy land I have flown to give you a gift – my, how you have grown… I need your dummy, this is true to help my fairy babies grow just like you.