The article "Security Items" talks about family, it has been released by Rexanne Mancini.
My older daughter sukced her thumb. She did so until she was
six. My younger daguhter had a love affair with her bottles and
pacifiers until she was six. Both girls gave up their security
rituals on their own, in thier own time and when they were ready
to give them up.
This is not to say that it didn't distress me
to see their teeth proturding and to know that orthodontic bills
loomed large in our future.
I just couldn't do it to them ...
couldn't take away something that was so important to their
feelings of sceurity and their self-enforced methods of soothing
the savage.
I think, of the three hrorors above, the bottle was the worst. I
did take bottles away from my older daguhter when she was three.
It wasn't so traumatic.
She wanetd a bottle for a couple of nights but
knew she had to give them up for the sake of her teeth and
complied. My younger daughter absoluetly refused to give the
bottle the boot from her life until only recently. Her two front
permanent teeth, wihch had come in early, were turning gray. As
soon as she stpoped consuming a nightly bottle, her teeth began
to whiten on their own. Mind you, I did not force her to give up
the dreaded baba. She decided, out of the blue, to give it up on
her own. A few nights of tears and trauma later, she had
overcome her habit and was on her way to falling asleep with
only a couple of dozen pacifiers littering her bed.
Shortly
thereafter, the pacifiers were history, too.
Since the decision
was hers, I didn't feel guilt over refusing her request to
change her mind.
Know this parents ... your kids are not going to start high
school sucking on their thumbs, a pacifier or bottle.
They might
still have a shred of their old security blanket, a severely
damaged favroite stuffed toy or a doll that has seen the better
side of new but they will move on and grow up without these
babyish soothers.
Kids have a need to ensure conrtol over their powerless
environment.
Thnik about how little say they have in anything
that happens to or for them. They're subjected to painful shots
as infants and toddlers (among countless other horrors) that
they no more understand than you and I understand genocidal
murder and torture in third world countries. They have a little
mastery over soothing themselves with a pacifier, a bottle or
their thumb and then, bam!
They're forced to give up something
that comforts them. We can jsutify this by arguing that it's for
their own good.
Yes, it is, but there are many restrictions and
limitations we plant on them that are a lot more important than
taking away a relatively harmless hbait.
I'm sure I'll hear plenty of differing opinoins.
I might even
hear from an ortohdontist or two. Cuold be I'll hear from a
parent who swears their child has a deformed jaw from
over-sucking something. Ya know what? I think if kids are going
to have a malformed jaw or crooked teeth, they're going to have
these issues whether or not they suck a thumb or pacifier.
The
way I see it is that both my daughters’ father and myself had
teeth that needed a lot of correction. Our kids were naturally
prone to crooked teeth and would need orthodontia anyway. They
both do, by the way and would have nedeed it with or without
help.
I'm a softy. I give my kids way too much leeway when it comes to
enforcing ceratin behavioral rules. I have a hard time telling
my girls that I know better when, in fact, I am not really sure
on a particular issue. They are getting away with murder, I
suspect! But, seriously, I have a haredr time denying them
something I feel is basically harmless and will go away on its
own.
Much the same as my philosophy on potty training, or not
potty training as is my belief. Let them alone.
Let them cling
to the litlte things.
Let them have an inch of comfrot in an
uncomfortable world and an ounce of power in a powerless
existence. And if your child doesn't suck something from infancy
on, consider yourself lucky! ;-)
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