Bye, Bye Binky 6/3/2013
My older son turned the big 3 a few weeks ago. Three seems like a big deal. It feels as if it is the break from baby years to little kid years. When you think about how much we all grow, learn, and eventually can do in those 36 months it almost makes the years after it appear a bit under-productive. We start from nothing and can walk, talk, ride a bike, make friends, learn how light switches work, and can identify every truck on the road (well boys for the last one anyway). Will has hit all these points and, as I’m sure many first born are, as Will is, very verbal, loves books, and can play well by himself. He is even great using a spoon and fork! He seemed to have achieved so much in these three years, but one thing he could not learn, or should I say “unlearn” was using the binky. |
A White Mountain hike @ 6 months
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Showing newbie Matty how a binky is done.
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As an infant, Will was a binky devotee. Those small silicone nuggets were everywhere in the home – we had multiples- and they came everywhere we went. I had clips to keep them in place and extras in all my bags. He wouldn’t fall asleep without a binky and would cry at night to get one. Worse, he’d wake in the middle of the night and cry in bed until mommy or daddy came in to find him one. Let’s just say these flounders on the floor in the dark are not our fondest memories of his early years. We were lucky that early peer pressure seemed to have at least one positive advantage. Once he was moved to the Toddler 2 room at his daycare (for 2 years & up) he realized he was the only one still using a binky for nap time. It took a month or two but he, on his own, took his school binky and tossed it in the trash. His teacher was so excited she took a video to show me. Unfortunately, we were nowhere close to having the same success at home at night.
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Desperation drives us to some choices we would not generally make. Those who know me well know I would have preferred to skip the whole Santa thing with my kids. I know, I know the magic, the other kids… I’ve heard it all. You can blame this sentiment on my reading of the Celestine Prophecy back in the mid ‘90s. There was a chapter in the book that talked about how we speak to and raise children. The point of the chapter was kids are ignorant, not stupid and not to treat them as stupid. For some reason I have internalized this as ‘don’t make up stories and lie to your kids’. *
I, of course, had already tried to reason with Will about the binky to no success. “It will mess up your teeth”, and “It makes your mouth stinky” all fell on deaf ears. So my decision to enlist the help of the jolly fat guy in this struggle was a true sign of desperation.
Prior to last Christmas, I told Will Santa would collect his binkys Christmas Eve and then give them away to the new babies in the world. Well, sadly at 2 years 7 months he wasn’t ready for this move. When Christmas Eve came I really hoped he would be swayed enough by the excitement of the holiday to part with these harbors of bacteria and start anew as a big boy. But Christmas Eve turned sour and the stinky binkys remained.
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Celebrating his 1st birthday
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Morning of third birthday.
Bye, Bye Binkys! |
As Will’s third birthday was approaching I let it be known that at three you had no choice but to surrender your binkys to Santa. That was the rule. Santa would make a house call on Will’s third birthday to pick up the binkys and hopefully, leave something cool in return. Luckily he seemed much more receptive to the idea this time. On the morning of his third birthday, we got a box and both placed all the binkys in it. We wrote a note to Santa and Will signed it. He helped me tape up the box and placed it on the ground beside the front door. Then he went to school. When he came home there was a bag where the box had been and inside a very cool Lightening McQueen pillow pet… how did Santa know?
I am very happy to report there has been no crying over the end of the binkys and the pillow pet is on the bed nightly. Happily too there have been no bad words said about Santa. I guess I should give the big guy another chance too; he certainly had my back on this one.
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Please do not copy or reproduce without permission.
Links are just fine, though.