How I Cured My Son’s Bottle Addiction Via Procrastination, Lies, and Bribery

I’m the first to admit that I am not a perfect parent. To list just a few of my myriad shortcomings, I regularly bribe my child with M&Ms to get him to behave in public¹, I make no effort to stop him from watching WWE (and subsequently attempting some WWE-style divebombs off the sofa), and judging by the outfits he wears and the ridiculous array of toys he carries with him everywhere he goes, I am perhaps a wee bit too indulgent². My most grievous offense to date, however, is undoubtedly the fact that I allowed — nay, encouraged — my son to drink bottles until he was two years old.

I know, I know. It’s bad. I’m cringing.

In my defense, I didn’t plan on letting Bubba drink bottles so long, and I certainly had no intention of creating a routine in which bottles would be used to get him to fall asleep every goddamn night. It just sort of…happened. Listen, do you make the best decisions when it’s 3am and you’re half asleep and your child is crying and you know that you can make it all stop in a matter of seconds by simply chucking a bottle into his bed?! I didn’t think so. And furthermore, I did ask the doctor if she had any tips on breaking the habit when I took Bubba in for his 18 month checkup, and she told me it was perfectly fine for him to continue drinking from a bottle until age two. Granted, I didn’t specify to her that I was allowing him to use bottles as a sleep aid and she probably assumed I was referring to normal daytime bottle-drinking, but with her professional endorsement in hand, I continued enabling Bubba’s ever-worsening dependence on the bottle unfettered and figured I’d sort it all out when he was a little older.

Of course, as time marched along, the situation started seeming a bit ridiculous and I was having more and more trouble pretending that it wasn’t a major problem. When your child can open the fridge and say “milk, please!” and then carry the bottle to bed by himself and drink it with no assistance whatsoever, it’s hard to convince yourself that he’s just a baby and thus bottle drinking is only natural.

I knew I had to put a stop to this nonsense, but I had absolutely no idea how to make it happen. The obvious solution — just not giving him bottles anymore — was out of the question, thanks to my staunch refusal to deal with the epic nightly meltdowns that would surely ensue. Call me a wimp, call me a pushover, but I just do not possess the strength required to tune out the misery of my one and only child. I considered just waiting until Bubba decided for himself that he no longer cared about bottles, but when it became apparent that that day wasn’t likely to come for another decade or so, I buckled down and formulated a plan of attack that I prayed would provide the desired results without traumatizing him (or I):

Step one – planting the seed: Starting last week, I began doing a lot of talking about what a big boy Bubba was, particularly with regard to all the fun stuff he liked to do. “Those Hot Wheels are so cool, Bud,” I’d say. “big boys like you love to play with cars!”

Step two – identifying a patsy: At the same time, I talked non-stop about Baby Mia, the 8-month-old daughter of one of the daycare workers. “Baby Mia can’t play with cars like you can; she’s just a baby!” Or “Baby Mia doesn’t get to eat candy like you do, because she’s just a baby.”

Big boy stuff is awesome; babies have miserable lives and don’t get to have any fun at all. Got it so far?

Step three – a distraction: The night before The Reckoning, I took Bubba to Target and showed him some bedding options, explaining that he was going to get a Big Boy Bed the next day and we were going to say bye-bye to his “baby crib”. Just as I had hoped, he was quite intrigued by this development and happily selected a construction-themed blanket and dump truck pillowcase. I didn’t mention anything about bottles (or lack thereof) at this point — the success of my plan hinged largely upon him being so excited about the new bed that the shocking removal of his beloved bottle would be at least somewhat overshadowed.

Immediately upon picking him up from school the next afternoon, I sprung into action. I told him that his Big Boy Bed was ready and that he was going to sleep in it that very night. All evening, we talked about the bed, frequently abandoning other activities to take yet another peek at it. I nearly damaged a vocal chord with all the excited squealing I was doing (“YOUR BIG BOY BED IS SOOOOO COOL! I LOVE IT SO MUCH!”). And it was working! He was PUMPED!

Step four – bring it all together: When bedtime finally rolled around, I continued expressing excitement about the new bed until the moment I’d been dreading finally arrived: he asked for a bottle. I took a deep breath, said a quick prayer, and in the most casual tone I could muster considering my pounding heart, dropped the hammer: “nope, no more babas, Bud. Babas are for babies like Baby Mia, not Big Boys like you!”

Now, to be completely honest, I didn’t really expect this charade to work. In fact, I hadn’t even thrown the bottles away at this point, because I really thought I might have to give up at some point in the night and just let him have one. But to my complete and utter shock, he accepted it!!! He whimpered for a while and it took ages for him to fall asleep (this was partially due to the excitement about the new bed; he kept calling me in there to talk about the damn dump truck on his pillow), but by 9pm he was sleeping peacefully.

Step five – improvise, lie, and bribe: Obviously, that wasn’t the end of things. No, he woke up in a tizzy at 3:30am, first demanding a bottle and then, upon realizing one was not going to appear, wailing “BABY MIA!!!!! Baaaaaaaaabyyy Miiiiiiaaaaaaaa….”

Apparently, I had been unclear in my explanation of why he couldn’t have any more bottles, because he was convinced that poor Baby Mia was directly responsible for their disappearance. Over and over again, he cursed that innocent infant’s name for stealing what was rightfully his, and obviously, I decided to just go along with it:

“Shhhhhh, it’s OK, Bubba. Yes, that’s right, Baby Mia needs your babas now. You can use a cup like a big boy!”

I kept repeating this ridiculous logic until he began to calm down, at which point I switched gears and opted for some good old fashioned bribery: “Let’s go back to sleep now, and in the morning we can go to the store and get a new dinosaur book! And you can sit in the cart like a big boy and have some M&Ms!”

Guess who hasn’t asked for a bottle since?

When do they hand out the Mother Of The Year awards?

…………………………………

Footnotes:

¹I also consider this strategy to be a learning tool, though, because I make him tell me the color of the M&M before I hand it over. I’m pretty sure the educational value outweighs the bribery, right?

²Do you want to fight with a toddler about why bringing six Hot Wheels, a teddy bear, and a football to the grocery store might not be necessary?