Hilarie Stelfox: Only dummies believe in scare stories

Oct 24 2009 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

ANOTHER week and another ‘scientific’ report for parents to worry about.

Last week it was the risks of sharing a bed with babies, this week the headlines warned: ‘New research links long use of dummy to speech defects’.

Apparently, American and Chilean researchers have discovered that sucking on a dummy past the age of three has negative consequences.

“Well,’’ I said to my boss, who had thoughtfully placed a cutting of this story on my desk, “I’m sure that a dummy saved my sanity when Firstborn was a baby.’’

And so today, I write in praise of dummies, comforters, pacifiers, call them what you will.

This is one of those issues to which common sense must be applied. It stands to reason that shoving a ‘gob-stopper’ in your child’s mouth day and night for years on end will impair their ability to speak, suppress their desire to do so, and deform their developing teeth and jaw. We didn’t really need a research project to tell us that. And, in any case, the project studied the behaviour of only 128 pre-school children from Patagonia, who had, variously, sucked fingers, dummies, breasts and bottles - hardly an exhaustive sample.

The subject of dummies tends to polarise parents. My mother hated them with a passion and took every opportunity to remove Firstborn’s dummy whenever she came to visit. She was particularly anxious that he shouldn’t be seen in public with one.

From our perspective, the dummy transformed our grizzling, grumpy baby into a slightly more contented and compliant infant.

With dummy in place we could complete simple household tasks without having to carry him around in a sling.

At night, the dummy helped his over-active brain to switch off and sleep. We were more than happy to use them, quite shamelessly, in public.

Before Firstborn’s arrival I thought we wouldn’t be the sort of parents who gave their child a dummy. But I was wrong.

There’s a certain snobbishness surrounding dummies. Is it because they look a bit naff? Or do they hint at poor parenting, an inability or unwillingness to settle your child without resorting to an artificial device?