Ah we did these things pretty early on with our son, at about 2 years old we took them away. He loved having a pacifier that had the animals attached to them, a frog one to be specific! We just went through a week though where we said that's it and took it away. The night time was a bigger struggle but we wittled the number of them down, kept them of course hidden in case there was crazy pushback, but eventually once we started taking them away after he fell asleep and didn't give him them back, it was over so we were really glad. The next thing we did in an equally easy time was potty training. One weekend we said enough pooping in a diaper and thankfully he did excellent, peed and pooped in the toilet in the same day!
I totally get it though, a lot of times it's more about the parents wanting to deal with it then the kids lol we weren't ready for our sleep to worsen so we pushed it off but once we finally said screw it, it ended up being totally fine and we lost minimal sleep compared to normal lol.
One of the things that our son has picked up is situational swearing, which is hilarious and awesome in some regards, but a little challenging in others. We don't correct him or tell him not to say the things so it doesn't draw more attention to it than it needs to be but we try to be more cognizant of what we are saying and when. The other day we were cleaning and I dropped something and it broke and in the exact same tone of voice as my wife he goes "ohhhh shit, we have to clean that up" it was unbelievably funny but we couldn't blame him! He hears us say it and he understands why and when we say it so he repeats it lol Thankfully outside of that, he's been remarkably great with not picking up our bad habits like our phones. He doesn't have one of course, he has one of our old ones that barely turns on but he gets bored of it and goes back to building things so we want to try and keep that going as long as possible!
If I could say one thing that we don't love that he does is still drinks almond milk for the most of his liquid intake. We water it down (delicious sounding, huh?) but we would love to stop buying the stuff and reduce the sugar intake he gets from non-fruit things but in the larger scheme, we can't really complain all that much!
@cmplxty - Thanks for the engaging comment.
I am glad to hear that your son transitioned well away from his pacifier. Our little man has been doing well too.
Our next transition will be potty training. I hope that it goes as smooth as your experience.
Your story is a great example of how much children mimic their parents. They are prone to say what we say and do what we do.
Again thanks for stopping by and sharing.
!ENGAGE 25
Yeah one of the things we realized is they will give you signals letting you know that they are ready to do something. The important part is recognizing those signals, we weren't great at recognizing them for a little bit lol.
Good luck on the potty training! We hunkered down for a weekend, got some treats of various kinds to reward him and made sure that we showed him how excited we were when he successfully did something like that. It wasn't too bad but he got scared pooping the first time. One thing we made sure to do is not let him have a diaper on when it could be prevented. We just talked to him, made sure he understood that when he needs to pee he needs to tell us, we said it but would also bring him to the bathroom every 45 minutes or so and he finally peed so that was one hurdle.
Hopefully when you undertake the potty training you'll share how it went!
That is a great point. Our kiddos are giving us signals. We have to make sure we are not so busy that we miss the signals.
Not sure if we will try to get through the holidays first, but we will definitely be thinking about potty training soon. I will try my best to get a good post written once we go through the process.
ENGAGEtokens.