Surviving the Paci War
Aaron Sharp | August 11, 2020
This post originally appeared August 6, 2017 as one of my A Sharp Life columns in the Odessa American newspaper. It appears here by permission of the newspaper. The text appears largely as it originally did 3 years ago, but I have taken the liberty of adding a few visual aids and clarifying comments.
This week we decided it was time to start weaning the almost two-year-old Fashionista off her pacifier. This has been a fairly traumatic event for our adorable little spitfire because the “paci,” as she refers to it, is her favorite thing in the whole, wide world. Multiple times a week we discover our little cutie in the throes of anguish because her paci got stuck in her seat at the dining room table. It always gets stuck in the same place, and she always begins to cry for two reasons. First, her paci is stuck. Second, she cannot move anywhere in the house without taking the chair with her. This happens enough that it feels like we are filming a Groundhog Day sequel.
To be clear, every child and every parent handles the pacifier differently. Some kids don’t like them and some kids won’t turn loose of them without an incident bordering on a physical confrontation. It’s different for everyone. Our family tends to get rid of them sooner rather than later. The line will be different for everyone, and the world has enough of parents judging one another, but let’s be honest, if your child takes the pacifier out at a restaurant, reads what they want off the menu to the server, and then puts the pacifier back in, you might be doing it wrong.
We began this process on Sunday. The whole way to church the Fashionista asked about, sang about, and generally memorialized her pacifier. As a side note, there is nothing more endearing to volunteer children’s workers at church than a child whose parents decided to stop giving her a pacifier right before they dropped her off for church. The children’s pastor is a good friend, but I’ve noticed he isn’t returning my calls this week. I’m sure the two things are unrelated.
The Zoologist and the Ballerina each got weaned off of their pacifiers at the age of one. The process for the Ballerina was reasonably painless. Of course, she is the only one of our kids who likes to suck her thumb. The Zoologist did not like having his paci taken away at all. For weeks after we finally took his pacifier away we would find him with one in his mouth that he had stored away for safe keeping like a small squirrel with the last acorn on earth. All good things, however, must come to an end. Now, it is the Fashionita’s turn to enter the brave new world of life without a pacifier.
Halfway through the week she had really done a pretty good job with the adjustment. At least we thought she had done well, then we realized that she had been stealing her baby brother’s pacifier when we weren’t looking.
At this point I might need a paci soon.