My sister's 2 year old DD constantly has her dummy in her mouth and will only let it go to eat. She has had no trouble learning to talk but my sister has no idea how to stop her from having the dummy in constantly.

Any ideas?

Personally I'd let her keep it. She'll give it up eventually but if she knows her mum wants her to give it up she might just get more attached.

Agree with pp

Better a dummy then a thumb in the mouth. You can get rid of a dummy but not a thumb and this will create buck teeth.

She'll get rid of it in her own time.

From around 15 months, we told DS2 dummy is only for sleep time. He went along with that. If he's sick or unhappy, then I let him have it (when not sleeping). When he wakes up, he usually puts it on the kitchen bench and I put it away. If somehow he finds one and is using it when not asleep, I say that he needs to go to bed because he's using a dummy, then he'll hand me the dummy.

Last Xmas we tried to say he need to give dummies to Santa in xchnge of presents. He was just over 2, and oh-so-brave. He did give up dummies. BUT he couldn't sleep. So after 2 hours of lying on his bed, we gave him a dummy and he went straight to sleep. We'll try it again this Xmas.

We recently got rid of DS's dummy. He is 23 months. And I was tired of seeing him with the dummy in his mouth all day long and talking through the dummy. For us it was all or nothing!

We found our window of opportunity when recently he was sick and was wanting it all the time (which we allowed) but as a result chewed a hole in it and he was getting frustrated with it as it was broken. We decided that it was time to get rid of it as even before he was sick he would constantly as for it and sook around the house with his dummy and cuddle rug. Anyway, just before bed we said dummy is broken, and took him out to the big green bin and told him to throw it in the bin, which he did (he loves throwing things in the bin!) and then we put him to bed. He cried out, confused more than anything, and he went off to sleep without too much fuss.

So now we are dummy free, it has its good points and bad points. He now no longer asks for it during the day (that stopped after about a day or two from throwing it out, we would just change the subject) yay! His sleeps have been a little 'off', he is sometimes difficult to to put down during the day, and he is waking up in the night and very early in the morning, not sure if it just coincidence though.

Anyway, if your sister really wants to get rid of it, tell her to just do it and the 'throwing it out' method works best with this age group as you can explain it to them and they actually understand! My DS was playing with a doll that has a dummy and he pointed to it and said "no-no" which is his word for dummy and I said, yes you used to have a dummy too, where is your dummy and he said 'bin!' ... he has been dummy free for 3 weeks.


Good luck!