At what age did most of you wean your children off of the pacifier? Our pediatrician said that our son should be off of it by the time he turns 2 which is in 4 months. We tried to do it last week, but he throws a huge fit and now works himself up to the point that he makes himself throw up. We ended up giving the pacifier back to him, and we're both frustrated about it.
Every kid is different.
We were lucky, our daughter was very pacifier focused the first ~3-4mos, she needed it to sleep and calm down, it was very helpful for us. But, around 4ish or 5ish months she started consistently sucking her thumb, and then she just dropped the pacifier progressively. We got rid of our pacifiers a month or two ago as she's just a thumb sucker. IT's a mixed bag, of course, we cant' take her thumbs away when she gets too old like we could a pacifier (.. well maybe..), though at the same time I'm not keeping myself up at night to keep a pacifier in her mouth next to her crib...
She doesn't suck her thumb as much as she used to, now mostly just at night, when she's upset, or a few other times, like randomly in the morning when I'm showering she sticks her thumb in her mouth and rubs her head, or at swimming lessons when we do the "on your back" time, she basically starts to fall asleep..
There's a lot of pacifier strategies online for working with it and starting to treat it like a special reward. So, like, they get the pacifier when going to sleep as a special treat, or after something special, and then slowly weening that back. Taking it away completely will probably be pretty frustrating (like... if I came into your office and just took off all of your clothes and was like "HEY MAN DEAL WITH IT, DOCTORS ORDERS"), but slowly coming up with "pacifier time" and "non pacifier time" and ramping up the non time, ramping down the time. I think my sister (who's a pediatrician) had a strategy with her son that he got pacifier time after dinner and when he was sitting down, but when he was up and about he couldn't have it... And then when he was pretty much weened off of it they "lost it at a hotel, sorry buddy..."
Generally, I think the hard rules with pacifiers are overblown up to a certain age, like 3 or 4. After 3 or 4 you can get issues with dental and speech development, and the pacifier might be an indicator of another issue like emotional neediness or something but not the actual problem itself. I guess if you can get your kid off the pacifier by 2 then it'll be good to not deal with that with a 3 or 4 year old, but I don't think it's like some hard sell must be solved by 2 , either.