Suck It

Just in time for the holiday season, the Battle of the Binky has begun.  I’ve just taken the first step in waging war on oral pacification in my house.  I’m slowly phasing out my son’s binky usage during the day.  Yes, I’m fully aware that most people think my son is a little old to still walk around with a binky in his mouth.  One of my single guy friends pointed this out to me one day when he asked my son’s age and then went on to say “Oh, he’s way too old to be sucking on a pacifier.”  To which I replied, hey if you have anymore parenting advice send it my way, since you have so much experience being a guy who’s single with no responsibilities and zero children, and all.  He said that he used to be a thumb sucker until his parents would spray the “same stuff that they use for dogs to stop chewing on things” on his thumb.  Some of my single friends swear there’s little difference between raising a dog and a child.  I’m going to have to go ahead and disagree.  A dog is not the fruit of my loins.  A dog is not a mini me.  A dog cannot talk back and say, “Ewww, this stuff tastes awful,” or, “Bad mommy,” which I’m sure is exactly what my son would say if I pepper sprayed his binky.

Oh, and dogs can be put down.

When you enter a battle of this magnitude, you have to be prepared for the ultimate test of wills, the ultimate power struggle.  Who is stronger, me or my precious son?  I’ll tell you what, my tiny son is quite a behemoth of strong will.  He is a combination of me and my husband and this makes him just about the most stubborn baby I’ve ever known.  Everything he has done he has decidedly done at his own pace in his own time.  I can’t really take credit for any milestones in his life because he is so fiercely independent. When he decided to walk, he just started walking.  When he decided to talk, he just started talking.  His favorite words are “I do it!”  Meal times are like road side bombs in our home and I have had to use all of my tools of manipulation just to get him to eat his vegetables, now that he’s decided vegetables are “yucky.”  Any wrong turn can result in a devastating explosion.  Not to mention he’s the spitting image of me, so fighting with him is like fighting with myself in the mirror.  Of course, as with any war, it’s of the utmost importance that I pick my battles.  The ones I choose to fight I have to be committed to fighting.  Because if I’m not consistent every time, the ever watchful child will learn quickly that sometimes he’ll win, even if he loses most of the time.  What will result is an epic struggle for power that will last for the rest of my life. 

While I am fully engaged in the battle of wills pretty much all of the time, others unknowingly get drafted into it.  Dada just wants some peace when he gets home from work so he gives in to Junior’s fits to produce a second of quietude.  “Don’t make him eat those if he doesn’t want to,” he’ll say, rubbing his forehead, not realizing he’s just launched an air strike against my efforts.  Junior learns fast to ask dada for cookies instead of mama.  Talk about manipulation.  And don’t even get me started on grandparents, who drop atomic bombs all over my battle when they throw all the rules I've established in my own house straight out the window.  Grandparents are never, hear me now, never on the side of us parents.  They are always going to sabotage our efforts, setting back months of hard work with just one sleepover.  Junior gets everything he wants at grandma’s house and he knows it.   Those same people who never gave us anything now give our children everything.  Then they have the nerve to send home to us the next day a child possessed with the demon of overindulgence, and expect us to correct him.  A child who was almost compliant now won’t do a thing you ask him to and answers everything you say with a resounding “no.”  It takes days of reconnaissance to start over, much less gain any new ground.

When talking about power struggles with toddlers, a friend of mine suggested a course in “Love and Logic,” a Parents as Teachers seminar that’s offered a few times a year.  The point is to get Junior to think he has power over his life by offering him more decisions.  Such as, instead of “eat your vegetables” at dinner time, it’s “what kind of vegetable do you want?”  This manipulates the situation so that both Junior and mommy are satisfied.  I can get on board with that.  I’m all about manipulation especially when it yields the exact result I want.  Although, this method kind of goes against all of my own old school upbringing and somewhere my dad, who just had to snap his fingers and point to make us behave, is rolling in his grave.  Oh, and I can just hear my mom snickering when I offer my son “choices.”  She’s the woman that will give my son suckers from the time he walks in her door until the time we leave her house, but when I try to do some new school, psychological manipulation on my kid I’m being a soft wimp.  “Kids should just do what you tell them to,” I heard one of my mom’s friends say.  Right, that’s so going to happen.  I hate to admit it but when I tell my son not to do something he will look at me and smile and do it anyway.  They learn so early.  Since the dawn of time there has been a constant, ongoing battle to get children to obey their parents.  Just ask God.  

Per usual, I’ve received all kinds of advice on how to get rid of my son’s binky obsession.  And as usual, I find myself weighing all of my options.  One of my friends suggested that I tie it to a balloon and let it go up into the skies, waving bye-bye as it floats away, hopefully landing in some other child’s life.  That to me sounds like a way to effectively get my son to hate balloons and to forever refer to them as the great binky thieves.  Another friend of mine suggested that I cut off the tips of the binkies.  She actually said, “clip the nipples.”  I cringed and covered my chest.  I’ve heard of binky fairies who come and take away your binky in the middle of the night and leave a special treat behind.  I’ve heard of taking Junior to the toy store and letting him exchange the binky for a toy.  You can hide them, you can conveniently lose them, or you can just tell your child no and endure two straight weeks of crying.  It seems that no matter what, I am faced with the same reality.  It’s just going to take some time and some growing on both of our parts to overcome the binky.

I was at the overcrowded mall today buying some overpriced lotion when my son decides that it’s this particular time, in this particular store, that he wants his binky.  He asks for it over and over again, “Binky, mama.”  “Mama doesn’t have it,” I say and this time I don’t have to lie.  Today I decided not to give in and pack an emergency binky in the diaper bag.  Today was the beginning of the end, in my mind.  My Gettysburg.  He starts the tears.  “Sucker, mama.”  The force is strong with this one.  He is cleverly letting me know that if he can’t suck on a binky, he’ll take whatever else is available.  Sucker first.  “Apple juice, mama,” he says next.  I hand him his sippy cup but it’s empty.  “Sorry baby.”  I hand the credit card to the cashier who is sympathetic and who is trying her best to distract my son by showing him all kinds of cute, scented soaps.  He isn’t interested.  I hand him a soap dispenser in the shape of a Christmas tree.  “Here buddy!  Your very own tree!”  “NO!” he screams.  He has made it clear to me and everyone else that he wants only one thing: oral satisfaction.  I got nothing.    

I can’t imagine what my face must have looked like when I picked him up and carried him crying and screaming out of the store.  His face was full of snot and tears by the time we got to the car.  I got in the car, turned around and said very calmly, “When we get home you can have your binky, but that means you have to go to sleep.  Do you want to go to sleep when you get home?”  He said, “No.”  He fussed a little more in the car but by the time we got home, all was well.  He’d forgotten about wanting his binky and instead he had lunch.  We ate peanut butter and jelly, laughed, and when it was time for his nap, I satisfied his oral fixation and let him have his sweet, precious binky.  He slept like an angel. 

I suppose in the near future I will have to crack down and get rid of the binky altogether.  Baby steps, my friends.  Let me revel in this small victory today.  It cost me several dirty looks from impatient mall goers as I dragged a crying baby across the entire length of the mall, but it didn’t take away my dignity.  They don’t know what those terrible twos are like, or else they’ve forgotten.  They don’t know how hard I’m working to implement certain standards in my son’s life.  I said it once and I’ll say it again, parenting is so hard.  Those people just don’t get it, the ones who say in restaurants “Can’t you keep that kid quiet?”  Or who stare at you with judgment and condescension while you’re checking out, trying to squeeze in a little Christmas shopping, buying some stupid overpriced soap at the mall. You know what I think of those people?  Hold on while I get my emergency binky out.  Because even though I won’t let my son have it, I’m going to shove it in their faces and tell them that they can just suck it.