Hilarie Stelfox: Only dummies believe in scare stories

Oct 24 2009 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Is there a suggestion that dummies are used instead of cuddles and human contact?

The American and Chilean researchers also looked at the effects of bottle feeding, breast feeding and thumb sucking on speech development. Again, not surprisingly, it was discovered that babies who had been breast fed were less likely to have speech impediments than those who had been bottle fed or sucked their thumbs.

Firstborn was a breast fed baby and we only gave him a dummy when he was fractious, which, admittedly, was quite frequently. It had a miraculous calming effect.

By the time he was a toddler, a time of greater contentment, the dummy had become a sleep aid. And shortly before his third birthday we dispensed with it altogether - a bit of Thomas the Tank Engine bribery did the trick.

My friend told her daughter that the Dummy Fairy had come to reclaim her property. I knew that wouldn’t work with Firstborn, who was a Father Christmas sceptic from an early age.

Not wishing to brag, but in order to make the point that dummies do not necessarily render children dumb, I am proud to say The Boy was speaking whole sentences by the age of 17 months and one of his first words was ‘injection’ (fairly typical, I’m told, of a vet’s child).

In fact, and I’m going to whisper this, he was an earlier talker than his sister, who never had a dummy and spat them out when they were offered to her.

Of course, there are homes where dummies are over-used. And there’s no doubt that it can be a hard addiction to break if a toddler is allowed to hang on to one all day and night for too long.

When Secondborn was at primary school, one of the infant class children used to be greeted at the school gates by his mother - and dummy. It was like a gin and tonic at the end of a stressful working day and a look of sheer bliss would spread across his face as he applied suction.

I’ll leave you with two more findings on the subject, which show that reports and research are frequently contradictory: Previous studies on dummies have shown that they can halve the risk of cot death, but extended use may lead to an increase in ear infections.

In my view, the judicious use of a dummy to soothe a frazzled baby, not to mention the nerves of its equally frazzled parents, can only be a good thing. And we shouldn’t worry about it.