KRAZI KIDS PART lll - LISA

My bug eyed dummy sucker. That is how she was then, as a toddler living in Rhodesia, on a sugar estate in Triangle. Although she has now lost the bug eyes and the dummy she hasn't lost her rather wacky sense of humour! Although it can wears thin as she lives her life in Cape Town as a single mom holding down a demanding job.

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Lisa was 2 in this photo and her dummy, which was her new best friend from the time of her birth, was a fixture day and night and I wondered whether she would ever be friends with anyone or anything else. When she reached the age of 4 I thought I had better do something about it. I believed and still do, that a small child will give up their comforts when it was good a ready, as they will potty train more easily when they are ready to do so. I was one of THOSE. But by 4 and 6, a little encouragement did not harm!

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I would say "only at night" - or try and hide them altogether but I could never stand the heartbreaking sobs this caused and always caved very quickly. I started to have visions of her walking down the isle one day with her dummy pinned where her corsage should be.

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Then one day I thought I little psychology might do the trick without causing pain. I told her that I would buy her an extra large lunch box, for all the dummies as well as her sandwich. She was fine with that.

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1 failure to my name so far.

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But I did some more brainstorming and came up with THIS. I think I should have patented it for I truly had a lightbulb moment!

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I tied a dummy to her bed, not too long, just long enough to reach her mouth. "You can suck that thing all day, BUT you have to lie on your bed to do it. I think she just heard "all day" and thought she had worn me right DOWN ... ha ha, I LOVED letting them think they had won! It always made them so HAPPY, and a happy child has a happy mom!

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"ok" my little tot beamed in agreement. As the day progressed, this undersized, skinny little babe would race through the house, dive onto her bed, grab the dummy, have a few sucks, jumped up and was off outside again. It was actually quite a funny sight to witness, still brings back smiley moments when I look at the old photos.

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As the days wore on, and also as I predicted, the bedroom dashes decreased, maybe they were becoming more trouble than they were worth and she had to always stop what she was doing? Exhaustion took over? Her dummy became less and less important to her?

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And then one night I looked in on the sleeping children .... "whose strange child is that in the bed...? good grief! It's mine!" Dummyless no less.

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And just a small part of me felt a little sad that one of my children had taken another small step from babyhood on her journey into the difficult years that lay ahead before she would be one day be a mom of her own.