Self-soothing is great and all but…
How are we supposed to get our twins to cut their self-soothing habits? Seriously. I have mentioned a time or two before that we used sleep training for all three of our kids. The whole point of sleep training is to teach your children how to self-soothe so that when they wake up during their normal sleep cycles (which happens several times a night), they can easily put themselves back to sleep. Kids might employ any number of different self-soothing tactics… and the ones my kiddies rely on are finger sucking (baby boy), and a pacifier (baby girl).
We have done the whole pacifier thing before as this was my oldest son’s self-soothing vice of choice, That said, I literally have no recollection of what happened when we got rid of his, but I know he was around 18 months old. We lost his pacifier when we were out of town and we didn't buy another one. That was it. I can’t recall any tantrums or awful nights… but let me tell you something... my daughter is going to put up a fight you hear me? The girl is obsessed. I will admit my husband and I have been enablers. After one too many misplaced pacifiers I got the bright idea to get a pacifier clip and… egghhh… it feels like the girl constantly has a pacifier in her mouth. I blame the pandemic because damn it… we had to pick and choose our battles and that wasn’t one we were willing to address at the time. Lol.
As for baby boy, I don’t even know where to begin because… you know…. his fingers are attached. I have never heard any success stories from parents whose kids also chose to suck their fingers (and truly I only know of people whose kids sucked their thumbs…but same idea). Anyhow… all I ever hear them say is that despite threats… or applying something unappealing like hot sauce… the kid kept sucking their finger. The only way it “seems” like this habit ends is when a child either A) physically can’t do it anymore because they have some type of mouth application (e.g. braces, etc.) that makes it literally painful for them to do so… OR B) they get to an age where they realize finger sucking might not be a socially acceptable thing.
When discussing with our pediatrician she pretty much said the latter is the most common way kids kick their finger sucking habit and that we could try all we want to get baby boy to quit but he probably won’t stop until HE is ready to.
So… let me know in the comments below if you have had any success cutting any of these self-soothing habits. As far as the pacifier goes we are considering a slow wean where we relegate the pacifier to sleep time only, or, cut the top of it and say it’s broken - which is an actual thing I have heard people have done with success. Either way we are in for some battles ahead lol!