Pacifier Fairy

The following is an entirely unscientific observation, but I find that the shift in German child rearing philosophy before and after WWII is akin to the move from the Old to the New Testament. In an earlier epoch you had the Grimm fairytales, Max und Moritz and Struwwelpeter stories - serious hardcore object lessons on the dangers of childhood and the fate of those who misbehave. Postwar (then booming) Germany emphasized instead economic incentives for staying on the straight and narrow rather than the dire consequences of going astray - thus you have the custom of presents on the first (half) day of school and the Pacifier Fairy. Grade school is still 2 years away but the Pacifier Fairy finally paid a call to our house about 2 months ago.

The Pacifier Fairy (Schnullerfee) collects pacifiers from big kids so she can, I don't know, recycle them and (yuck) pass it on to babies, I guess. Pig, who gave up daytime use of his Nuni fairly early always still had his dirty little secret for going to bed or whenever he's lounging around at home - interestingly he always made sure to put it away if there were visitors at the house.

The deal is when you're ready to hand over the pacifier, you have your mom or dad call the Fairy and let her know in advance what you'd like to have as a present in return. For Pig commensurate quid pro quo was a garbage truck. A BIG ORANGE one.

Since we were so crap with our toilet training efforts (that's another story) we decided this airy fairy socially accepted bribing was the way to go. However we didn't have much faith that Pig would live up to his end of the bargain, so we made him quit cold turkey for two weeks before we called the Fairy. Amazingly he withstood the test and the Fairy, after some moaning about how kids used to be happy with a nice yo-yo or puzzle, did come after she managed to track down this particular prize.

We were so pleased with the outcome that we told the Fairy she could count on our repeat business - next time hopefully a bit sooner rather than later....