When and how should the dummy be removed?

If you ask the dummy question to five experts in medicine and/or education, you may get six different answers. And none of them will necessarily be wrong. That's why we don't want to take a scientific approach to the topic - but rather the way I do it in practice.

But first things first. Why does a dummy have to go at some point? Quite simply:

Medically: It is not healthy for the teeth and for the development of the dentition. Children who soother a lot can develop an overbite relatively quickly. But don't panic: Fortunately, this disappears relatively quickly when the dummy is removed.

Pedagogically: At some point, children need to be taught that they are bigger now, that their level of development is higher and that they therefore no longer need a dummy.

That's why I bring up this topic at the latest at U7a (when the children are three) - if the children still have a dummy at all by then. If they do, it is always very important to me to encourage the parents to take a proactive approach to this project. It should be a stress-free time for the family, i.e. not just when the child is about to start nursery. And then you can try to gently wean the child off the dummy over two or three weeks.

If this doesn't work, it is important that the parents react strongly and consistently and make a tabula rasa, so to speak. And the classic method here is still a great one: the dummy fairy. You put the dummy or dummies in a box, leave it outside the door - and the next day there's a little present instead of the box.

I promise you: The child will be in a bad mood for a maximum of two or three days and then it will not only accept the situation, it will also have visibly grown a centimetre or two because it is no longer a butzele and no longer needs a dummy.