The Bo-Bo Challenge

The Bo-Bo Challenge

It's been a rough week. Our lovely little Angel, usually so quiet and easy to please has gotten crankier and crankier. Maybe it's the fact that she has a winter cold. Maybe the Terrible Twos has finally caught up with her. Whatever the reason, she has been difficult lately!

4 out of our 5 kids have loved their pacifiers, (in our family we call them bo-bo's). Out of all our kids, Angel has loved her bo-bo the most. In the past, I have always taken away the pacifier of the older toddler before a new baby was born. This time was the exception. I felt like she needed it too much. With baby #5 coming, I knew Angel wouldn't be getting as much cuddling as she was used to, and I wanted her to have as much comfort as she could.

When Angel would wake up in the morning, she almost never still had the bo-bo in her mouth. So at least I knew it was POSSIBLE for her to sleep without it!

It was fine for a while, but over the past few months she began demanding it more and more. She used to only have her bo-bo while she was sleeping. But then she began wanting it during the day more and until she had it all the time. By last month she was using it all the time and only took it out to eat! It was frustrating because no one could understand her when she talked. Even though she could talk perfectly fine, her language skills began to rapidly decline just because there are certain sounds you CANNOT make with a pacifier in your mouth!

This was agony to me, because I remember being a new mother, and looking at older children with pacifiers in their mouth and thinking to myself, "Oh, I will never never do that to my kids! I won't give them a pacifier, and if they do take one, I'll never let them get too old with it...once they can talk, then it's gone." Well, guess what? It happened to me! (I let it happen, I guess)

I tried hiding the bo-bo's from her so she could only have it at bedtime. But my older oh-so-helpful children would always get one for her when she asked for one. I don't blame them! When your two year old sister is crying you want it to stop! Out of expediency and the desire to have a quiet household and happy car rides, I began carrying extra bo-bo's in my pocket wherever I went.

And thus, the bo-bo monster was born!

Angel begins to depend on her bo-bo 24/7

The week of Christmas was the worst. She began crying all the time, even WITH the bo-bo in her mouth. So on Sunday, Dec.28th I finally snapped. I couldn't stand the cranky bo-bo drama anymore.

Poor, sad Angel on the day Mommy took away her bo-bo. In the second picture she is trying to smile for the camera, but you can tell her little heart is broken!

I scoured the house, looked under all the beds and in all the pockets and hid every bo-bo. I decided we'd break her of the habit cold-turkey. If she's going to cry anyway, might as well get rid of the pacifier and get all the misery out of her system. She's turning 3 years old in February, so she's really ready to give it up...even if she doesn't know it yet!



The first day wasn't too bad. She was really sad and kept asking for her bo-bo. I read her stories that night, making up new words to Good Night Moon so that the new storyline talked about the baby bunny missing his bo-bo, but his Mommy in the rocking chair kept on saying "Hush, no more bo-bo's you're too old now!"

She accepted it with relatively good grace and she slept through the night, and I thought to myself, this is going to be a piece of cake!

WRONG!

The next two days were a nightmare. She crumbled to pieces. She spent a lot of time crying in her room and throwing fits. She was quite persistent in asking for a bo-bo, and absolutely horrified when I kept on affirming to her that they were ALL GONE. Finally she began asking, "Couldn't I have ONE bo-bo, just one? You know, the one in your pocket." Clever girl!

Finally yesterday late afternoon after a particularly rough fit, I found her laying on her floor with a stunned expression on her face. She looked up at me with growing understanding and simply said "My bo-bo's are lost!"

Well, today was the best day so far. She slept over at her cousin's house last night and managed to go to sleep without any huge drama. She did pretty good because there were all her cousins to distract her. But she had another melt down at bedtime tonight.

I wonder, how many days can this continue?

And I'm hoping that she won't realize that she can steal baby Jewel's pacifier...that would be a disaster.

But so far, so good!

Angel's favorite past time is to cuddle on the floor with blankies...and preferably a bo-bo.

Dotson Bo-Bo history:
(just for fun, if it bores you, don't read!)

Our family calls them bo-bo's because that was the term Manly was raised with. Most of the kids in his family loved their pacifiers. I think all the kids in turn used a bo-bo. Since there was no tradition like that in my family (only one kid in my family growing up took a pacifier for a while) we just called it what he was used to.

I have never met anyone else in the world except the Dotson side of the family who calls it a bo-bo. But I have heard of several other strange nicknames for a pacifier!

Einstein had a bo-bo till he was 2 years old, then we began to cut of the tips gradually, a little bit more each night. He complained that they were broken, and demanded that we fix it. Of course we couldn't fix them, so he grew resigned. When the bo-bo's nub was too short to suck on anymore, he'd just hold it in his hand to go to sleep, and then finally he just threw them away himself.

Louisa had a bo-bo till she was 22 months old, and then I got rid of them cold turkey. A new baby sister was just 3 months away, and I just explained to her that she was too old for them, and so she couldn't have them anymore. She cried a little bit that first night, but then she never even asked me for one again and got along just fine. It was as if they never existed in her life.

Duckie hated pacifiers of all kinds, we when she was born tried for months to get her to accept a bo-bo. We finally found one brand she would tolerate about half the time. But at three months old she refused to ever suck on one again. If we even tried to put one in her mouth, she got very offended and would scream in rage. So that was the end of that. But after baby Angel was born, Duckie wanted to try a bo-bo just to see what it was like. We let her try it out, but then quickly told her they were the baby's. There was no point in letting a 2 1/2 year old BEGIN a bo-bo dependency!

Angel at her first birthday

Angel: You know all about her now! Only question is, how long till she isn't missing them anymore?

Jewel: Colicky baby hated the pacifier at first, but we convinced her to love it, and now she is quite addicted. We'll see how long she takes one.

Baby Julie and her beloved bo-bo