We've been kind of fortunate that Simon has not been a daytime binky kind of kid. I think the last time he really "needed" one outside of bedtime hours was the holidays. Even when he is sleeping, he generally seems to need one only as he falls asleep. It has been rare that I've seen him have one in his mouth once he is sleeping.
There are a lot of opinions about when a kid should no longer use a pacifier. I've felt that since he could go without during his functional waking hours, we could let him decide when he didn't need it at night, for the most part. The problem is that, as Simon fans know, the kid has some serious chompers. He has over-achieved in every way when it comes to teeth. He also, and perhaps because of his teeth, has never really "sucked" on a pacifier as much as he's kind of chewed on them. He puts the bottom half of the plastic shield part in his mouth, behind his bottom front teeth, and bends the nipple part into his mouth.
To make a long story longer, this recently developed into torn silicone nipples. The combination of his sharp teeth and the weird positioning has made it so they start to split and tear, to the point that he's either going to digest fragments or he's going to choke on some portion of them. So he has more or less decided for us when he can no longer use them. That, and at $6 a pair, we're not going to stock up on them either. He destroyed the last pair in less than a week.
The attempt tonight is to give him the bigger, more durable "soothie" style pacifiers, since we had a few. That isn't going well. He seemed fine for about 10 minutes or so, and after one check up, the second crying fit got serious and hysterical. Shit. After calming him down, I decided to hang out in his room for the time being, in hopes that he'll crash. The problem is that the other pacifiers don't seem the right texture or shape for him. So far, me in the room seems only like an excuse to play peek-a-boo with me. I suppose the giggles beat the crying, but we can't do this indefinitely, tonight or long-term.
Diana went out for groceries, and I called her and asked her to pick up a few more of his favorite pacifiers. The common advice seems to be to try this with naps instead of overnights first, but because of the destruction, we don't have a lot of choice but to go cold turkey. I don't think he's ready, but we can't let him keep putting a choking hazard in his mouth either.
I suspect the next few nights are not going to be fun.