We finally managed to stop my 3 year old from using a binky. She’s a sassy little madam and we really struggled to get her to stop. We tried cutting holes in them, which worked for my son immediately, but she didn’t care. She just kept on using them, only now, every suck was accompanied by an annoying clicky noise. We tried telling her that she was too old and that it was time to give all of her binkies away to a new baby, but that didn’t appeal to her in the slightest. She clearly gets her selfish streak from me and wasn’t remotely interested in helping out another kid. I tried bribing her with toys and candy, but she just said NO, folded her arms, and refused to discuss the matter further. Even on the few occasions we managed to ignore her nonstop wails for myyyyyy biiiiiinkyyyyyyyyyyy after taking them away from her, she would talk her brother into getting her one on the sly.
We did succeed in stopping her from taking them out of the house a while ago, but she often found a binky-shaped substitute to get around the rule!
Wine stopper or whine stopper?
After one particularly whiney Sunday with constant arguments over her binkies, I just lost it. I abandoned our plans to next try using that bitter stuff that you paint on your nails to stop biting them, and just decided to go cold turkey. I removed every single binky from the house and told my daughter that the Binky Fairy had taken them away. There was no planning. I had no background details to provide about the Binky Fairy whom I had just invented. My husband looked at me like I was insane. But it was done.
Surprisingly, she accepted the Binky Fairy story without question. The first night was terrible, I almost gave in, but we made it and had ice cream for breakfast as a treat. The second night was just as terrible and I almost gave in again, but we survived and had cake pops for breakfast. The Binky Fairy was a great ploy, because even when she was upset, she never once asked for a binky because she understood that they had gone. By the third night, there were no more tears and we were back to our usual bedtime nonsense.
