Is it just me or do I see more children (meaning 3 years old and up) here with pacifiers and bottles hanging from their mouths?
I watched a child of about four running beside her mother holding her bottle by the nipple with her teeth.
Then yesterday, I watched a boy of about five years in Asiaworld Mall with a pacifier attached to his shirt collar, take it out to eat a Happy Meal and talk to his parents and put it back in while he assembled his Pokemon toy all by himself. If that isn’t f*cked up, I don’t know what is. I was half tempted to walk over, snatch it off him, and discard it in the closest trash bin where it belonged.
I say, if they can talk, then there’s absolutely no reason for them to have a dummy in their mouth.
I’ve got a six year old in my kindie class who occasionally pulls his pacifier out of his school bag, plunks it into his mouth, runs around the room for a couple of minutes while the other children cheer him on. He doesn’t use it all the time and I haven’t really found a pattern for this behaviour such as feeling sad, angry, etc.
Now I simply say that “gee, sometimes I don’t feel very big either” and this seems to put a quick stop to the action. It doesn’t shame him, rather, it bugs him that others may perceive him as a “little boy”. I’m not so much bothered that he seems to need this every once in a while as I am that Grandma (who is raising him) puts it into his bag every day. It’s not an every day thing and I venture to guess that if it weren’t there he would quickly find other ways of coping with those “moments”.
Strangely enough, I was at the hospital the other day and witnessed a grown man busily sucking on one. Turned out to be candy on the end rather than a nipple! He seemed to think nothing of this as he strode down the hallway busily sucking and then taking it out of his mouth to look at it! Odd moment…
Yeah, there was a three-year-old on the first day of school who had a pacifier in his mouth. Now, this is an English-immersion school so not only was he expected to talk, but to talk in a foreign language which is a bit difficult with a binky in your mouth. I don’t think it was there for comfort since he was already playing with other children confidently which is not the behavior you’d expect from a small child in need of physical objects for security. When he took it out to talk to me I saw his mouth was still puckered in a way that is similar to an infant’s mouth. He’s still in my ESL class a year and a half later. I do wonder though, because I seem to have a high incidence of children with speech impediments (in both of their languages) and I wonder if allowing a child to have a bottle and a pacifier when they have developed their teeth is the cause. Most of the problems are with fricatives and velar, dental, and labial stops that are common to both English and Mandarin. Some of the sounds I hear problems with are /k/, /g/, /d/, /t/, /m/, and /s/.
And the principal for which these things are used. You use a pacifier to keep a baby from crying, not a child from talking. Just item #163 on my list of pet peeves.
My wife and I notice that in Hong Kong, many parents continue to push their kids around in strollers until they are five years old. We can’t understand it. Yes, the MTR can be crowded, but there is always plenty of room in the front and back carriages where a child would be safe walking on and off. I guess they just want to rear their kids so that they can never do a damn thing for themselves, including walk.
A couple of years ago, there were a few articles in the South China Morning Post about a mother who was asked to stop breast feeding her child in the children’s section of the public library. Many mothers wrote letters of protest to the newspaper and the library. The mother said that she had covered her breast while feeding her son, so it shouldn’t have been a problem. After reading the first few articles, I thought the lady’s behaviour was reasonable. Then, with the fifth or sixth article, the newspaper included a photo of the mother and child and told the age of the child: over four years old. WHAT THE FUCK?
I know you’re not being totally serious, but this is very far from the truth. Bear in mind that the current WHO recommendation for (non-exclusive) breastfeeding is actually two years, although that becomes much more important in less developed countries. I don’t know anyone personally who’s made it much over a year
I don’t know much about pacifiers since I never used them, but I believe the only major thing against them is that usage should stop before the permanent teeth come in. I would think that most parents would try and make them give it up well before then though. Having a three-year-old using a dummy isn’t all that unusual - I know of at least two, the main difference being that they’re not allowed to use it in public.
I was being serious, as the missus stopped for that very reason - pretty understandable in my view, even though my two daughters viewed the situation in a different light if I recall the loss of sleep due to crying kids correctly.
The pacifiers… My oldest daughter came under a strict regime on that side, when she came to Taiwan, and she stopped one week into kindergarten. The little one never liked those things anyway.
Yes, I think that’s perfectly understandable and as good a point to stop as any, I was just debating the sweeping ‘most sensible mothers’ statement. It is every bit as ‘sensible’, if not even more so, to actually continue with it because of its proven benefits. The biting stage is only a temporary thing - it’s just a matter of gently teaching the baby not to. Whether each mum feels it is worthwhile to persist to the next stage is obviously up to the individual and both choices have their advantages.
my old girlfriend breastfed until she was six. i asked “why?” and she replied “why not?”. she is a filipina and made it sound like such wasn’t peculiar in her time.
Excellent answer from the old girlfriend! My Filipina housekeeper says she breastfed her daughter (now 18 yo) for 3 years. She says it’s very common where she’s from.
And Virtual Guanxi (what happened to the guanxi???) to daasgrrl for her posts.
[quote=“Mr He”]Most sensible mothers will stop when the kid gets teeth. I didn’t. Just say no they will stopHaving your nipple bitten hurts. yes it does :help:
I always thought that kids here were actively discouraged from using pacifiers and bottles?
I always get in trouble for not giving my baby a pacifier. He sucks on his fingers which horrifies people here. They think babies hands are dirty, no they’re not they’re being sucked on all day!
What confuses me is when I see children who are able to run around and play in McDonalds being hand-fed french fries and other food items by their parents. I mean these kids are clearly able to hold a french fry in their own hand and put it into their own mouths but the parents will hold it and feed the kids. Kind of reminds me of those nature programs in which the mama bird feeds her chicks. Strange to watch it in McDonalds though.
well I’ve got one for ya…and this is not a joke, I know this child. 6 years old, parents spoon feed him dinner, put on his diaper and give him a baby bottle of milk!
I don’t know. While living in France, I watched a girl of about four years of age, run around with her older sister then stop go to her mother and procede to feed herself…lifting the shirt and putting the nipple in her mouth…while Mom talked (the people stopped talking and sat looking aghast). I’m glad I was not the only person at the party who was horrified. When the child can breastfeed herself, I think that’s a good sign to wean her. It could only be worse if she brought over some cookies to accompany it. I had a four-year-old student who after a hard day of learning to write his name and the sounds of the alphabet would be carried down to his stroller and given a bottle of milk. And this was a huge four-year-old too. He was not the only “big” four-year-old I taught who got a bottle.
:help:
