I have to say that during my years as an early childhood educator I heard about a lot of tricks that parents would do to get their kids to try something new or move on from a certain behavior. Honestly, I thought most of them were silly. Now I am like, sign me up for every gimmick in the book, because kids are tough and as parents we need all the help we can get. Enter, the Paci Fairy. No she’s not one of the characters that you will find on the shelves of your favorite store, she is purely a desperate ploy that I’m utilizing so I hopefully don’t traumatize my paci loving child. Call me crazy, but it’s working. Like, if I had to rate it on a 10 point scale with 10 as the highest, it would be an 8. I’m not even kidding! Before I get into all the details, here is the cutest freaking video of when the Paci Fairy came to our house on Monday.

 

I mean, can you even handle how cute she is? So let me break all of this down for you.

Why We Decided to Ditch the Paci

This is maybe the lamest reason ever, but it’s real. We use all natural pacifiers that have to be replaced every so often and it was high time to get her a new one. We had talked about ways to take away her paci over the past few months but just kept putting it off because she is so cute with her paci. She only gets it at bedtime, nap time, or long car rides anyway and it’s not a struggle or bothersome that she uses one to be honest. She treats it like one of her friends and has to tuck it into her bed with her favorite bedtime stuffed animals every morning after she gets out of bed. Then the other day I got a real good look at the thing and knew it was on its last leg so we decided on a plan.

The Paci Fairy

Since Elouise loves Tinker Bell and fairies we decided to have the Paci Fairy come and take away the paci. Think of the same concept as the Tooth Fairy but with a pacifier. I had a feeling that it needed to be a quick and painless thing with a reward at the end. I know that there are way more practical  and no-nonsense ways to achieve this same goal. However the potty training conversation is currently a non-starter with this girl after she pooped for the first time and freaked the heck out, so the whole concept of being a “big girl” is a touchy one. I knew we needed a little nudge. So the Paci Fairy was not only going to take her paci but she was going to take it to a new baby who needed it (she’s into babies right now so I threw this in as an extra motivator). Then she got toys, and not just any toys, these are toys she picked out herself. The concept is easy enough it was just all resting in the fact that my toddler and her wild emotions could explode at any given moment.

How it All Went Down

I wanted to give Elouise time to get used to the idea and really really talk it up. I gave myself a timeline of a week, although we didn’t end up needing that long. So all day Sunday we talked about the Paci Fairy coming and that she’d take her paci to a baby who needed it and bring her a toy. Sometimes we had in depth conversations about it and other times she’s just say “yeah mama” which I’m sure was her way of getting me to stop talking. We ended up at the mall on Sunday so we went to the Disney store and she got to pick out a new toy (or in her case two toys lol) that she wanted the Paci Fairy to bring her. My hubby secretly bought the toys while I distracted her with See’s candy and the merry-go-round. I know, best Mom ever! We continued to talk about it for the rest of the day. Monday morning I asked her if she wanted to write her a letter and leave her paci out and I fully expected her to say “no mama not today, maybe soon” (which is what she says if I ask her if she wants to use the big girl potty) but she said yes. So we did. Again, I fully expected at any given moment for her to go bananas and change her mind but she didn’t!

We did the whole shebang and then it was actually time for bed. She was a little wound up from all of the excitement so she laid in bed for a while making weird noises and singing songs to herself, which she does every night lol. It took her like an hour and a half to fall asleep which is way longer than normal. A few times she would say things like “I need my paci” “where my paci go” “her take my paci, because I’m a big girl” “puppy dog pals, I miss my paci”. So that was rough. Then when she woke up in the morning she was as happy as could be and announced “I don’t have a paci because I’m a big girl”.

Go ahead girl, pin me to your favorite Pinterest board:

 

So there ya have it! For us it was quick, mostly painless, and actually really fun!