What you are about to do
Over four evenings, your child gathers every dummy in the house into a box they have decorated, and leaves it out for me. I take them, and I leave a letter and a star. Nothing is confiscated, nothing happens while they are asleep that they did not agree to while they were awake, and nothing needs buying. The sharp part lasts three to five nights. Most families are back to normal sleep inside seven to ten.
Hello. I’m Ditch. I’ve done this a few thousand times now, so let me just tell you how it goes.
The plan at a glance
- Evenings one to four: tell the story, and let them decorate a box.
- The night: they find and count every dummy, carry the box out, and put it down themselves.
- Once they’re asleep: the box leaves the house, and a letter takes its place.
- The morning: let them find the letter, then read it to them.
- Every evening that week: go and look at their star.
- Nights two and three are the hardest. That is normal, not a sign it is failing.
The four evenings
Four evenings, not four days - all of it happens at the end of the day, when they are already winding down and already listening. You can stretch it over a week if that suits you better. You cannot usefully compress it into one night, and I’ll explain why on the science page rather than here.
Tell the story
A few nights before, at bedtime. No pressure, no deal - just a story about garden fairies who need dummies to make stars, and who only take them from children who want to give them.
Let them choose the night
This is the part that does the work. A child who picks the date is giving something away. A child who is told the date is having something taken.
Decorate the box together
Find a small box and let them cover it in stickers, crayon and glitter. Every dummy in the house goes in - then it goes out to the fairy garden at dusk.
Find the star
In the morning the box is gone and a letter has arrived. That evening, and every hard night after, you go outside and pick out their star together.
What you need
A box. That is genuinely the list. A shoebox, a cereal box with the top cut off, an old biscuit tin - it does not matter, and a slightly battered one that they have covered in stickers works better than a beautiful one you bought, for reasons that will be obvious the moment you watch them do it.
- A box they can decorate and carry.
- Whatever they decorate it with. Crayons, stickers, half a roll of tape.
- Every dummy in the house. Every one. More on that below.
- Somewhere to leave it - a doorstep, a windowsill, the end of the bed.
- A letter from me in the morning. You can write it yourself, or get the pack and print mine.
The one thing on that list that catches people out is "every one". Not most. Not the ones you can find. The car seat, the pram, the changing bag, the bottom of the toy box, the one behind the radiator, the emergency one in your coat pocket that you have genuinely forgotten about.
Count them out loud with your child while you do it. You will need the number later, and having them count is half of why it works.
The night itself
Here is the whole of it, in order. It takes about fifteen minutes.
Before bath
The hunt. Go round the house together and collect them all into the box. Let them do the finding. Count them into the box out loud and write the number down somewhere - you will want it in the morning.
After bath
They put the lid on and carry the box to wherever they have decided I should collect it. They put it down themselves. You do not carry it, and you do not move it afterwards while they are watching.
At the window
Look out at the sky together for a minute, before the curtains close. Not a long speech. Just: “they’re all up there, and one of them is going to be yours.” Then bed, exactly as usual.
Once they’re asleep
The box goes. Out of the house, not into a cupboard - a cupboard is a thing that can be opened at four in the morning by a parent who has had enough. In its place: the letter, and something small.
Out of the house. Not the loft, not the top of the wardrobe, not the glovebox. The single strongest predictor of this going wrong is a parent who knows exactly where they are at two in the morning on night three.
The morning
They will go straight to where the box was. Let them find the letter on their own - do not hand it to them, and do not read it before they have seen it. Then read it to them, slowly, twice if they ask.
The letter should mention the number they counted, and one specific dummy that only somebody who really looked would have noticed. The blue one with the chewed edge. The one from the car seat. That single line does more work than everything else on the page, and it is why the counting mattered.
Then, that evening, you go outside and find the star. It does not matter which one. It matters that you pick the same one tomorrow.
In short: let them find the letter on their own, read it slowly, and find the same star together that evening.
The week after
Go out and look at it every night for the first week, even the nights when everything is fine, even when it is raining and you have to do it from the landing window. You are building a thing to point at, and a thing you only point at in a crisis stops working as a thing to point at.
Nights two and three are the hard ones. That is not a sign it is going wrong; it is the shape this always has. What to do on those nights is on the do’s and don’ts, and what to do if it goes properly sideways is over here.
