Hi I'm Dr. Mary Barbara, autism mom, Board Certified Behavior Analyst and
best-selling author. When Lucas was a baby he was addicted to his pacifier. And
since becoming a Behavior Analyst in 2003 I've seen tons of kids who are
equally addicted to pacifiers, and also kids who have major problems weaning
from a bottle. When I see parents out in stores and they have toddlers with
pacifiers in their mouths or there's older children drinking out
of a baby bottle, I want to just yell: get that pacifier or bottle out of their
mouths. It's affecting their teeth, their language and probably their behavior too.
But I get it, I was that parent and I didn't know how
to wean Lucas from his pacifier without it being traumatic for both of us. Many
children, especially those with behavior issues, frequently use pacifiers well
past infancy. Their parents struggle with what to do to keep them quiet and
keep them happy so they usually just give in and plug the child up with a
pacifier. Toddlers and even older children can also be addicted in the
same way to a bottle. Both bottles and pacifiers are really bad for toddlers
and older children because they hamper talking,
they usually increase problem behaviors related to access to tangibles, and both
bottles and pacifiers can be detrimental to normal teeth development, both baby
teeth and adult teeth. So I've created the following steps to help a former
client of mine get weaned from her pacifier which she was addicted to. These
steps should help with weaning your child from a pacifier or bottle if you're
not willing or able to go cold turkey, which is another route you could choose.
So if you want to do more of a slow process
of weaning here's what I would do: there's six steps. I'm just gonna go over
them briefly and you can download the cheat sheet right below this video at
MaryBarbera.com and that will give you these six steps to take with you if you
really do want to try this out. So step one with weaning from a bottle or
pacifier is to assess when your child needs or uses a pacifier or a bottle. So
the time of day, what the setting is, is it at night time, during car rides, only
at church and places where you need to keep the child quiet. So the first
step is always assessment. The second step is to make a plan with boundaries
to wean, based on your assessment. So make a plan that I'm only going to feed a
bottle one time a day, or she'll only have a pacifier at nap or night time,
or in the car or at church. I will only give one bottle at night when I'm home
sitting in a certain rocking chair. So make a plan for yourself to tackle this,
to gradually wean things out. Number three: if your child likes or has more
than one bottle or pacifier, hide or dispose of the others. So they can't
stash them away or accidentally find a pacifier during non pacifier times. I see
this happen a lot in kids houses where they're actually looking under
sofas or or reaching for cabinets in the kitchen. And when I asked what they're
reaching for or what they're looking for it's a pacifier. So if you want to keep
one pacifier in the bedroom and one in the glove compartment of the car, that's
fine. You just need one or two and you need to maintain control of the bottles
or pacifiers during the weaning process. Step four is if you're going to wean, to
just using the pacifier at nap or night time, a good tip technique that I created
was to create a binky or pacifier box. Just a regular shoebox and
that can be kept up into the closet on a high shelf in the closet in the bedroom.
And the child then would learn that nap is all done or nighttime is all done, the
pacifier goes into the pacifier box and the pacifier goes, the box goes up high
on the shelf. And that gives clear boundaries to the child so they don't,
they don't expect the pacifier outside of those times. And number five is to
give strongly preferred edibles or toys for giving up the pacifier and putting
it in that box, or giving up the pacifier in general. So you want to have other
strong reinforcement to make that happen. And the final step is for bottles
particularly, we want to give the least preferred drink in the bottle and the
most preferred drink in a cup, so they can continue to have the bottle but if
they love juice and they don't really like water then you're going to want to
put water in the bottle and juice in the cup, and that way it'll get more likely
that they'll want to take the cup. Also we want to pair the cup with highly
reinforcing videos and activities during non bottle times. So when it's a non
bottle time, the bottles should be out of sight and just the cups with highly
preferred liquids in them. While your child or client probably won't
understand this complex plan, even infants will respond to reinforcement
and other behavioral procedures that are incorporated into these six steps. If
your child is ever crying while trying to access pacifiers or bottles, we want
to not give them it to them. Also if they're crying or having other problem
behaviors while accessing the reinforcements, including blankets,
pacifiers, bottles - we want to take the item away for at least a few seconds,
show the child that crying, they can't have their preferred
items while they're crying. Get the child to quiet down and then give the item
back. At the very minimum children should not have access to pacifiers, blankets or
bottles on demand at any time of the day or night. They need your help with
setting boundaries. Assessing, planning and taking action may be emotionally
taxing for you and your child, so it's okay to pick a less stressful time to
implement all of this, such as after the holidays, when the other siblings go back
to school, after vacation is over etc. The important thing to remember is that with
these six steps you can tackle the pacifier problem and help your child.
Good luck to you! Remember you can download the six steps in writing right
below this video and I'll see you next week.