Next time on 'Intervention'

Well, now that we seem to have slight handle on the potty training thing, it's now time to move onto my son's crack habit aka 'the binky'. I remember *gazes wistfully out the window* when I was pregnant (read: stupid) and I thought, "My son will NEVER get a pacifier. Ick". Then, we brought him home. And he cried. A lot. And I needed my sanity. So, on our first night home, I took my hand inside of the dresser cabinet in his room and swept EVERYTHING on the floor. I dug through all of the baby stuff we had until I found a binky with a wee mouse on it (I still have it). He took the pacifier and was content. This means, if the pacifier is my son's drug of choice, I'm the drug dealer. And I'm still the drug dealer/enabler. Our daycare provider broke him of his addiction over a year ago, and I'm still dutifully, albeit unhappily, handing out 2 binkies a night when he asks for them. I've been wanting to break him of the habit for a long time, but I've always thought, "Well, let's wait until he gets to crawling phase..." and then crawling, led to walking, walking led to talking, and we're now at the point of no return. Now, he's working on his last two year molar, and I'm thinking when he finally cuts it all the way, I'm done.

I've heard many theories of how to handle this, and I'm thinking cutting the nub off is going to be the way to go. I've watched my son fall asleep and I know he puts the nub between his fingers of one binky to relax. I know when he's close to falling asleep because of this. And it sort of makes me sad because I feel like I'm forcing one thing after another and effectively MAKING him grow up. The only reason I'm making a big deal out of it is that we ran into a speech pathologist in WDW and she mentioned that she could tell my son still used a pacifier based on his L's and S's. She said that I needed to get him off of it ASAP. Initially, I was a little offended because it's none of her business, and part of me still feels that way. But she makes a valid point; I don't want to inhibit my son's speech by continuing to give him his drug of choice.

I wonder if A&E does a 'binky' intervention...