Opinion

Who would deny a child the comfort of a dummy?

A screen grab from David Beckham's Instagram account showing an article from the Daily Mail, which questioned his daughter's use of a dummy
A screen grab from David Beckham's Instagram account showing an article from the Daily Mail, which questioned his daughter's use of a dummy A screen grab from David Beckham's Instagram account showing an article from the Daily Mail, which questioned his daughter's use of a dummy

I always suspected it. Now I know. I was a bad mother.

The current argument over Harper Beckham, aged four, photographed with a great bath-plug of a dummy in her mouth, has triggered heated debate between the theoristic ‘experts’ and haggard, hollow-eyed parents experiencing the daily (and nightly) reality of a child who isn’t sick, isn’t hungry, isn’t teething and doesn’t need changing but screams relentlessly for no fathomable reason, till one of them drives all over town to find a late-opening chemist and buys that panacea for all infant ills – a dummy.

Our baby (like the curate’s egg) was good in parts. Mostly placid and delightful, but we had our share of panic-stricken floor-walking with a rigid shrieking bundle, blue in the face, not to be pacified with shooshing or rocking, nor gripe-water, Calpol, midnight drives in the car, nor, as one friend endured for months, the whine of the vacuum-cleaner.

Oh, the blessed relief when we ripped off the cellophane and she clamped her gums around the teat of a dummy, her eyelids trembling in ecstasy and there was silence.

I regret to say it was the thin end of a rather thick and long-lasting wedge. As she teethed and crawled and toddled, it was only a matter of time before she had a wardrobe of ‘nyums’ colour-matched to whatever she was wearing – kept in abeyance you understand for stressful situations like supermarketing, meeting strangers and long journeys.

A bedtime ritual evolved where she wore one on each finger like Liberace’s rings, (a trait that remains with her where jewellery’s concerned,) and one in her mouth. When she slept, withdrawal of the nyum was an operation akin to defusing an explosive device. Timing was all – too early and she’d clench her teeth round it in a vice-like grip and rise with it, sounding off like an air-raid siren. Only when deeply asleep could it be cautiously extracted.

And so she grew in wisdom, age and grace with the nyums a constant accessory. Though used only in moments of psychological need, we began to worry. So, one autumn Saturday, with great ceremony and shouldering a spade, Uncle Stanley walked down the garden, Daughter Dear trailing funereally in his wake. We were peeking from an upstairs window. She watched him dig a foot-deep hole. Then, one by one she solemnly dropped the nyums (all eight of them) into it and helped cover them over with soil, treading it in with her little blue wellies.

She seemed quite sanguine about the operation. Forty-eight hours later: “That child’s away down the garden with a spoon,” said her grandmother. Cue a hurried botany lesson on dormancy, germination and seasonal growth, the bottom line being that in spring, a nyum tree would grow, its boughs laden with rainbow-coloured nyums, enough to pacify a world of wailing children. (I know, I know – lies and deceit on top of deprivation.)

But wait a minute, there’d been nine nyums. Where was the yellow one, the one with the jingle in it, her favourite? We found it under her pillow and hadn’t the heart to remove it. Starting ‘big’ school at four and a quarter turned out to be a doddle. She marched in, sat down and asked the teacher: “When can I do my writing?” I was the one who wept. Obviously there were hidden stresses. Coming home, she’d dart out of the car, bound upstairs, have a long satisfying suck of the nyum, then descend serenely, every inch the seasoned schoolgirl.

This ‘dummy debate’ is nonsense. Who would deny comfort to a distressed and inarticulate child?

Truth be told, we never grow out of seeking it. We adults do it with food, with alcohol, with cigarettes, with sweets. These are our grown-up soothers – often with infinitely worse consequences.

I don’t recall how or when she gradually forsook and forgot the nyum, but I’m happy to report there were no long-term ill-effects. Her teeth are perfect, her diction is clear, she has no addiction issues – and I’m going to get such an earful when she reads this…