You know how they say that ex addicts are the most judgemental and critical of those that they seeing making the mistakes that they once themselves made.
I have to now put my hands up to this one, we were once a family of dummy addicts, and now every time I see a dummy I jump straight into hypocrite judgement mode.
Normally I am a very rational person, and I certainly think that every parent should find the parenting style and techniques that suits their family.
Let me take you back just over 9 years, in those days dummies were not hugely encouraged and there was lots of press all about how they could delay speech and language development, and how hard it was to wean toddlers off of them.
We started well, especially considering that we were living in a relatively new area with no family support nearby and no local friends. Add to that the fact that Aidan was our first baby, and I was very very ill and awaiting a major operation.
I admit that we did not have the first clue about how to care for this baby that had suddenly rampaged into our lives. Despite the 9 month warning we were very unprepared. We resisted the dummy for many weeks, but eventually we gave in.
Fast forward many many months and all our vows about how to use the dummy had vanished into dust. At one point Aidan had the dummy a lot during the day, just out of habit, when he was tired, when I was tired, when he was upset and just generally anytime he fancied. At night we had got to the ridiculous point of him having 2 dummies in his hands and one in his mouth, yes I know!
When he was 2 we managed to stop the dummy by telling him that nanny had thrown it out and had said that he was too big for it.
The subsequent 3 had no interest in dummies, Elliot and Caitlin would not even contemplate sucking one, and Alex was a thumb sucker from day one.
Back to my point, I now see a child awake, alert and happy in the day, and I have to say that I only just manage to resist the urge to remove their plug.
Now what kind of loon reaches out to take the dummy out of someone else's child's mouth, I think I may be going bonkers.
I know the cot death studies have suggested that using a dummy with a baby is a good thing, and I agree with that, and even using them for night time when the child is a toddler. Its the daytime when the dummy stops the child from interacting with the world, that's when I get that urge ( control yourself woman)
Does anyone else experience this urge to interfere, maybe about dummies, or some other random parenting issue?
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