What to Know
For some parents, getting rid of that pacifier is the last hard thing they have to tackle before potty training and attachment issues related to preschool. For others, pacifiers are taken care of cold turkey style around age one. To them, I say, what form of witchcraft did you use? Because, regardless of your thoughts on pacifiers, TikTok users have a way of making sure you know if your child is even a month too old to have one by their standards.
In a video that shows a preschool or kindergarten-aged kid expertly riding a scooter through a busy sidewalk, what people can’t stop pointing out is the pacifier in his mouth as he does it. The thing does seem out of place as the kid swerves between people and even performs a little hop on the scooter. Literally all of the comments are about the pacifier in some way, even though the kid clearly has the potential to be a professional scooter rider. See, I told you TikTok has certain thoughts about pacifiers.
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There’s a debate about the kid still using a pacifier.
Some kids are just born cool. Other kids are seemingly born with a pacifier permanently in their mouth. Maybe the kid in the TikTok is both? Either way, despite him being incredibly cool, hip, and everything in between because he can ride a scooter like not many other kids his age, what people couldn’t stop noticing in the comment section was that pacifier.
Maybe you call it a binky. Or, your toddler has a special nickname for the thing that some kids become absolutely dependent on. No matter what you call it, people are in agreement that the kid in this TikTok is far too old to be scooting around with it. Some even shared illustrations of pronounced overbites in young kids as a result of using a pacifier for years instead of having parents who got rid of it early on.
“If he can do all that on [a] scooter, he doesn’t need that damn pacifier,” one user commented. I mean, it’s true. Then again, maybe this particular kid needs a pacifier for emotional regulation, and it’s something the parents are working at.
If you ask most of the users in the comment section, though, the consensus is that they need to take that binky, burn it, bury the ashes, and salt the earth.
“Pacifier without helmet is like oxymoron,” another person commented.
Someone else added, “Omg! The pacifier on a child that age, I have no words.”
Other people flew to the comments to defend the parents of the kid in the video and urge others not to tell them how to parent their child. That’s fair. Then again, this is the internet, where the whole point of viral videos is to leave comments sharing thoughts about the content of said videos. Even though the parents probably thought the video would go viral because of the mad scooter skills of their little kid, it’s the pacifier that really stole the show.
When other users commented about the kid not having a helmet while weaving in and out of pedestrians on the sidewalk, someone wrote, “Calm down everyone over him not having a helmet, the pacifier is big enough to protect him like a helmet.” Ope.
