Family Man® A Little Inspiration

By Gregory Keer

If we didn't have a pacie, he would often freak out, having become addicted to it as if it were toddler Valium.

Weeks into the torment that middle-of-the-night crying causes parents of newborns, my wife and I prayed that our baby, Jacob, would find his thumb to soothe him. Night after night, we lay in bed, deciding if we should feed him, rock him, stick him out on the porch, or let him wail it out. Yet, if he could simply suck a finger or two, as his older brother Benjamin had as an infant, Jacob would cut down scores of painful wake-ups.

Alas, Jacob never did, though he tried. On several mornings in a row, we would fetch him from the crib and find scratch marks all around his mouth. The little bugger was making the effort - he just had bad aim.

So we gave in to stuffing a pacifier in his mouth and, after his suck grew strong enough to keep the thing in place, we were granted more consistent shut-eye.

Oh, what consequences we suffered for giving in to our shallow lust for slumber. For the next several years, Jacob relied on the brightly colored soothers to sleep. However, he frequently misplaced his pacifier during the night, losing it under his blanket or dropping it out of the crib altogether (with parental bionic hearing, we winced upon hearing the plastic smack the wood floor). Whenever this happened, he'd shout for us to find it or, when he switched to a big-boy bed, run into our room to get a replacement from the stash we kept in a night table.

Nighttime "pacie" sucking wasn't enough for Jacob. He needed one for car rides, TV watching and trips to the movies. If we didn't have a pacie, he would often freak out, having become addicted to it as if it were toddler Valium.

After Jacob turned 3, we campaigned to abolish the pacie. We tempted him with rewards, offered a ceremonial burial of the little suckers and appealed to his maturity. But the pacifier played on … Until one shining night, just before his fifth birthday, when Jacob announced, "I don't need my pacie anymore."

Wendy and I looked at each other in disbelief. We hadn't discussed ending the habit with him in weeks. After watching other signs of Jacob's evolution since he began a new pre-kindergarten class, we tingled with the possibility that the binkie era was over.