Bye Bye Dodi!

I’ve been waiting to write this post in case things changed…but it’s been a week now, so I think I can safely say that we are a dodi free house at last! No soothers, no pacifiers, no dodis!

Only last week I was lamenting to a friend of mine that I never expected to have a three year old child who still had a soother. But somehow, here we were, with the trusty dodi making an appearance every naptime and bedtime.

A few weeks ago, leading up to his birthday, we tried to convince Little Man that “big boys don’t have dodis.” But he was having none of it. “No big boys do have dodis. I’m a big boy.” End of discussion! I asked him would he throw away all his dodis when he turned three and he eagerly agreed. “Oh yes Mammy – I throw them all in the bin.” I was delighted! But he wasn’t finished…“But not this one,” he said, “This one I keep till I’m five!”

I know a lot of people might wonder why we didn’t just take the soothers away from him if we wanted to be rid of them. After all, we’re the adults. And don’t get me wrong – we did consider it. But doing that would have gone completely against our instincts, and everything we’ve learned about parenting Little Man. Charlie and I felt that we were the ones who taught Little Man to take comfort from his soother, and if we just took it, we’d leave him without his favourite means to soothe and comfort himself. We wanted it to be his decision, and a decision he was happy with.

All of the most successful transitions with Little Man have been driven by him. Our decision to start solid food was made when he grabbed some broccoli from a plate and ate it. We dropped feeds when he started refusing them. And if you’ve read my posts about sleep, you’ll know that nothing we tried to adjust Little Man’s sleep patterns was successful – in the end he slept through when he was ready, just like he dropped naps when he was ready. And at the start of this year, we potty trained him because he decided he was a big boy and wanted to use the toilet like the big boys and girls in creche.

So the child-led approach is a tried and tested one in our house. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been impatient with waiting for the child-led dropping of the soother!

But then last Thursday, I collected Little Man early from creche because he was sick. I arrived during nap time, and while I was there I happened to notice that none of the other children in the room had soothers. Later than evening when Charlie arrived home, I told him what I’d noticed, and we asked Little Man about it. He gave it a lot of thought and agreed that none of the big boys had dodis. Only one other child in the room had a dodi that he knew of – and she was younger than him! We didn’t make a big deal out of it, but I could see that he was giving it some thought.

The following day, we were playing in his room when I asked him if he’d consider giving away all his dodis to the babies in exchange for a new toy. To my surprise, he thought about it for a second and then agreed! I reminded him that if he agreed that would mean no dodi at bedtime, and no more dodi for nap time. He thought about it some more and he still agreed.

This was a first. If there’s one thing Little Man believes in it’s a deal. He knows that when we agree to something, we stick to it, so he had been very careful in the past not to agree to any deal that involved getting rid of all his soothers. Something had changed here, and I’m convinced it was his realisation that the big boys really didn’t have soothers. And there’s nothing he wants to be more than a “big boy!”

So believe it or not, that was that. He went to bed that night without a dodi, and to our surprise he never once asked for one. The next day, we put all the dodis in an envelope which we labeled “Dodis for Babies” and agreed to post for him, so that all the babies who wanted one would have dodis. Then we headed off to the toy shop and picked out a very nice Mike the Knight play set as a reward.

It’s been a week now, and not once has he requested a dodi. It’s unbelievable. We have found that he has been a little bit more clingy the past two nights going to bed, but I think that’s a natural transition while he tries to figure out new ways to soothe himself to sleep. And while he figures that out, we’re happy to be there with extra cuddles and reassurance. If you’d told me a week ago that I’d be writing this post, I wouldn’t have believed you!