Over the past few weeks, something kind of major happened that I completely failed to mention on here--which is pretty remiss of me considering how I lamented and moaned about it in the past.
Since age two, we've been trying to get Gabe's binkies away from him. We tried taking them away--he wailed and acted as though he would die. A couple times, when he lost them, we tried to say, "Well, you lost your last one. I guess if you can't take care of them, then you must not want them very much." This was not true and the tantrum that followed proved this. We tried to replace the binkies he liked with ones that we knew he didn't--even stooping to use binkies OBVIOUSLY designed for babies, and telling him as much. He blithely disregarded our attempts to shame him into not using them and sucked away at the binkies. Finally, the best that we could manage was to restrict his usage. We told him that he could only use them upstairs and on long car rides. And, though he acknowledged those rules and accepted the fact that he would have to give up his binkie if caught using it in other circumstances, that didn't stop him from TRYING to use the binkie anywhere and everywhere.
Really, he showed all the signs of a serious addiction. He hid binkies around the house to enable him to sneak sucks on it whenever we weren't looking. He would stick them in his PJs when he came downstairs or wrap them in his blanket. Then, when we weren't looking, he would throw one behind the couch so he could go back there to "play" a few times a day (he covered himself up with one of the blankets back there and sucked away at his binkie for a few minutes). Sometimes he played by the rules and would sit on the stairs (which were technically "upstairs") and suck on it. And he never, ever went to sleep without it. He wouldn't and seemingly couldn't.
And it's only been in the past six months or so that he became mature enough that we could trying bargaining with him. We tried to coax him by saying that big kids who went to big kid schools didn't use binkies--he didn't see any of his friends at preschool using binkies, did he? To which he, quite logically, replied, "They can borrow mine if they want."
It was frustrating and humbling. We were consistently being bested by a three year old. And then we found a seed that actually stuck. Libby suggested that, on his fourth birthday, he would officially be a big boy and the Binkie Fairy would come to our house. This fairy would take away all of his binkies to give to other babies and small children who needed them. And then we repeated this plan ad nauseum until, finally, he started to understand the meaning.
He wasn't fond of the idea until we also informed him that the Binkie Fairy would bring him a present for each binkie that he gave up.
THAT caught his attention. Gabe has reached the age where he understands gift giving--rather, gift receiving. He wants EVERYTHING he sees, either for his birthday or for Christmas. And he's reasonably sure that he's going to get it all, too. So when he learned that the Binkie Fairy would also give him presents, it suddenly became a game of What Can I Screw This Fairy Person Out of for a Few Binkies. His list was long and loud.
And we kept talking about it and warning him that the day was coming, sort of counting down the weeks until the Binkie Fairy came. I fully expected this plan, like all of the others before it, to flop. I expected him to receive the gifts jubilantly, but then when he went to bed, realize that he didn't have a binkie to sleep with and have a major meltdown that would force me to the store to buy a few replacements for the ones the fairy had taken.
Except, quite out of the blue, Libby asked Gabe if he wanted to try to sleep without it one night as practice and he accepted. And he did it. WEEKS before his birthday and the date we'd been working towards! He didn't have a great first night, but it wasn't terrible. Then the next day he made it through a nap time. He didn't nap because of it being gone, but he didn't freak out either. A day later, we took him to the store and let him pick out something from the Binky Fairy (yeah, kind of cheated on that one, but he never asked why the Binky Fairy--who has also failed to take the old binkie away, it's still on top of our fridge where Gabe can probably see it--would need us to buy his gifts, he was just glad to be getting them).
We offered him a bike! He really doesn't have a good pedaled machine to ride at this point and the purchase of a bike of some sort is inevitable, so we kind of hoped he'd let us lump this gift in with something we'd have to buy him sooner or later anyway. We let him try out several bikes, but he was completely unimpressed by all of them. He ended up going to the lego section and picking out a rescue helicopter and fire truck.
Yes. He chose two cheap lego sets over a bike. Two lego sets that I put together and he tore apart in short order, mixing the pieces so I would never put them together again (that's my rule, I won't dig through and sort out pieces--if he wants them put back together he has to keep the pieces separated, and since he never does that, I only have to put the things together once, which is just fine by me). Weird, right? Clearly he wasn't realizing the value of what he was giving up in our eyes. We would have gladly bought him the bike if it meant he never picked up a binkie again. I might have bought him two.
So, there it is. After nearly four years, our household is binkie free! And it gives me hope that we'll eventually be able to talk Norah out of needing a bottle every time she wakes up in the middle of the night. God that will be nice.
Oooh! Oooh! We took another step in the right direction last week, too. We permanently removed one of the gates from our doorways. The one blocking off the staircase that leads upstairs. We've been leaving it open for the past couple weeks. Norah can easily go up the stairs whenever she wants now. She still won't come down them, but she'll stand at the top of the stairs and call down to me to get her. And she's done it reliably enough that we decided she didn't need a gate there anymore. Really, we leave all of our gates open most of the time (and Gabe has figured out to open them so they are mostly moot anyway), but we are keeping the ones to the kitchen and my office until we no longer need to lock the kids out of the kitchen so they aren't pulling food randomly out of every nook and cranny and spreading it out all over the house. With luck, that will happen in the next few months and never again will I have to scream under my breath as I scrape the skin off my leg or gouge my balls while going over the top of a gate. Oh the joy that will bring me.
No comments:
Post a Comment