Procrastinet

We will not point out who it was who grew up with no overwhelming negative impact of having had a "P" day and night until sometime after his third birthday when he decided on his own he didn't want it any more. His mother said to any who objected, "He won't take it with him to high school, we promise!"

But special hugs to the Max! I was noting the breath sounds a bit last weekend!

The problem with the "P" is that she busted us upon taking one brief look at his mouth, and noticing that his two front teeth are cocked towards each other to allow a P divet. "Look at his teeth," she cried when I tried to minimize our P-tolerance, "there's a big pacifier hole in the middle of them!" So the ill effects are rather more than theoretical...

Um--are they certain that tipped front baby teeth make a large difference? Those teeth will come out and be replaced by bigger ones anyway, and then will come the issue of whether jaws are big enough to accommodate them. Time for a second opinion maybe???? Pediatric dentist? Your spreader and braces had nothing to do with a pacifier.

Whatever...I know nada except that kids giving up pacifiers because they're ready seems to me, at least, a better choice than having them taken away. Psychologically, if not orthodontically speaking.

Those of us before pacifiers who had thumbs that got painted with bitter tasting stuff or got tied down were not happy puppies. Every era has its authorities' "rules." Thumb suckers' parents couldn't take away the thumbs and told us our teeth would suffer, but a dentist once told me that my small overbite had nothing at all to do with thumbsucking. Who was right? I don't know.

Self-soothing is important. Satin blanket edge, thumb, "P," teddy bear--whatever. It's hard to substitute for what the child has connected with.

Whatever you decide, it'll likely be fine--but generations of parents have listened to the current authorities and kids haven't always been made really happy by that. On the other hand, they have survived. So you get to choose in spite of both doctors and mothers.

Pacifier philosophy notwithstanding, Max is well aware of the rule that the P's are only for the bed. Because, while babysitting for him this weekend, he tried to break that rule not once, not twice, but three times. He came marching into the living room with one in his mouth and one in his hand and I said "Excuse me, but what are those doing in here?" and he ran back into his room to deposit them on the bed.

And now I have pneumonia, too.

Key to getting my kids to use a nebulizer (before they invented those cool fish head masks) was telling them that they could breathe smoke like a dragon. It's also good snuggle time or time to do something otherwise verboten (tv or videos).

Oo - breathing smoke "like a dragon" is good. Max's face mask is a dinosaur, who we have christened "Donald" and established to be a cousin of his beloved big stuffed dinosaur, Devon. Maybe we can adapt the "smoke breath" thing to dinosaurs.

We did find that they go better when the portable DVD player comes to bed and he can watch They Might Be Giants' "Here Come the ABCs" during treatments. He'll even wear Donald strapped around his head instead of held-in-place.