Habits are easy to form ... especially bad habits. They take only a moment. But to break a habit, it seems to take forever.
A friend once told me that if you go cold turkey for 2 complete weeks, you will be off the habit.
I tried to break Little D's reliance on her lil Smelly bolster recently, and I took our vacation to do it. I told her that we could not pack her "lil smelly" into the luggage as it was already full and she had to try to go to sleep without it.
We were away for 6 days. The 1st couple of nights it took her a little longer than usual to fall asleep. But with the amount of outdoor activities that we did, the next few nights were no problem.
Before we left, I had told MIL to keep "lil smelly" away thinking that if it was out of sight, it will be out of lil D's mind. So upon our return she didnt have it, and she seemed to have forgotten all about it.
With the other children home on vacation, and hardly any running around for me, I was able to put lil D to her nap every afternoon after our return, and she managed fine without "lil smelly". Ditto for bedtime at night. So it seemed to me that the 2 weeks to break a habit thingey was working, coz by then 3 weeks had passed.
But yesterday, my son had his music class after school, so I had to be the chauffeur, and lil D was left under MIL's care. Guess what? She asked MIL about the whereabouts of "lil smelly", and MIL instantly went to her cupboard, took it and gave it to her!!
All my efforts in trying to break lil D off her reliance on "lil smelly" to fall asleep has now been wasted!
So the real way to break a habit is not only cold turkey for 2 weeks, but also to hide it from the grandparents!
6 comments:
Ha, ha, let her have it lah, "mum"!
Chris had a little blanket which I bought from Mothercare Singapore. Every night before he slept, he would hold onto one of the corners and "smell" it. One day, Rachel cut all the four corners of the blanket! She said it was disgusting! Chris was heartbroken and could still remember how Jie-jie cut his corners!
sigh... shud have thrown it away..
I'm sure you were frustrated. But kids being kids, will 'let go' of their beloved one day. One fine day.
Just give it a good wash and dry it under the scorching sun. She might just change her mind after that. Too clean, don't have that comfort smell.
Yes.. lesson learnt. Good luck then, in attempt no. 2. Hahaha
oh no, back to square one. grandma cd not resist sweet D's pleas.
I just recently managed to get S2 off his smelly "Po-Cheem". I basically just took it and threw it into the yucky dirty kitchen garbage bin. No way he would fish it out of there!!! A necessary cruelty....
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