Dummies for dummies

Our eldest daughter never really got into dummies. She's always been a thumbsucker. Mercifully, it doesn't look like she'll be one of those who find the habit impossible to break in later life. I had a friend at secondary school who still found the temptation difficult to resist, even in that world of intense, adolescent, social stigma. I do not wish to imply that I thought any less of this person for the longevity of his habit but, on balance, I would prefer that our daughter doesn't have to even consider the risk of ridicule. So I am relieved that her opposable digit now goes between her dentures only when she is on the verge of sleep. We allow this on account of it being cute.

We did at one stage offer her a dummy, on one of the countless occasions when we had desperate need to quell a scream. It just didn't do it for her. In hindsight, this was an early example of her admirable capacity for independent decision making, my own, distinct lack of which capacity makes it all the more impressive to me. When we inevitably had similar cause to offer the same solution to our younger daughter, during one of her early, screamy outbursts, she quite understandably went the other way, decision-wise, and has been a strong advocate of the pacifying device ever since.

Please do not infer that I am against the use of dummies. Most parents will attest to their valuable practical applications (they make babies not scream. Sometimes) and our youngest in particular is similarly cute when sucking away on hers. Think Maggie Simpson, but less yellow. Where our eldest has always had an emotional need for her three soft puppy toys (or "puppies," as she sensibly calls them) in order to get to sleep or leave the house, our youngest relies for the same purposes on one of her collection of dummies. They are much easier to store and transport than puppies, inanimate or otherwise, but also easier to lose.

And our youngest facilitates this with an uncanny prowess in the art of dummy hiding. Like some sort of confidence trickster she'll perform her blink-and-you-miss-it feats of concealment, gleeful at the frustration of Mummy and Daddy as they resign themselves, from under the contorted and ultimately fruitless awkwardness of under the sofa or behind the radiator, to another visit to the dummy aisle at the supermarket. I briefly referred to myself in the third person there, in the middle of a quite complicated sentence. Sorry about that. We buy a lot of dummies because our daughter keeps hiding them, basically. Archaeologists of the future will marvel at the hundreds of children we will appear to have entertained here, when they find all the dummies we couldn't.

Until now, this alarming propensity to stow them away has been the only negative aspect of our daughter's dummy habit. But, since she turned one, it has begun to dawn on us that, like all habits, the problem of quitting it will soon loom large. But where to start? Each morning we promise ourselves that we will embark on the painful process of denying our daughter her dummy fix. Thus far, it has not worked. We have, in fact, somehow regressed to the point where her standard requirement is two at a time. She takes curious pleasure from holding the spare in her hand and switching them at ten second intervals. It is surprisingly entertaining to watch, to be fair, but does not represent the progress for which we hoped. There is a real danger that this could become an issue.

Maybe we'll have to go cold turkey. I'm going to give her a motivational speech about the time(s) I quit smoking. That's bound to do the trick.

Then we can start thinking about getting our eldest out of nappies.