Easy Sippy Cups

Avent has a sippy cup in similar shape to a bottle. Plus, it has removeable handles, and the nipple is soft like a bottle. You can even put the Avent bottle tops onto this base. This helped my son through the transition. You can find these cups anywhere, Target, Walmart, Supermarket. Here is a link to the one I mean: http://www.consumer.philips.com/consumer/en/us/consumer/c...

Kuddos for wanting to go to a straw ASAP. Sippy cups maintain a suckle while straws help develop a true suck. And drinking from a cup without a lid is even better! Sippy cups are great for floors/rugs but not so good for mouths. (I'm a pediatric speech-language pathologist who ISN'T looking for more kids who need help developing good jaw, facial, and tongue muscle tone!)

You can try a juice box that you hold & squeeze gently to get the liquid to the top of the straw, then release when your daughter tastes the juice. For some kids, that's all it takes.

There are other tools I use that I get from the feeding tools section of Talk Tools: http://www.talktools.net/ No, I don't get a kick back :) You can use the honey bear with a food grade flexible tubing straw the same way you use the juice box. The advantage is that you can see the juice level in the straw in the bear, easier than in the juice box. You can either buy the bear with the tubing, or just buy a length of tubing for less than a dollar & buy a honey bear at the grocery, eat the honey & save the bear as a straw cup. I have also used the Infa Trainer cup for children as young as 8 or 9 months, and the recessed lid cups for training both cup drinking and straw drinking.

It's worth the effort to help your little one move forward with her oral motor development. Good luck!

to train your child on how to use a straw, give the kid a juice box, put the straw in the kid's mouth and then gently squeeze the box until the juice starts to flow. the juice will rise up through the straw, your kid will start sucking and that's it. they've learned how to use a straw.

Try using a camelbak sippy straw water bottle. They're intended for adults, but my daughter has loved ours since she was 6 months old. They're now BPA-free, so no worries. You can get them at REI.

We had good luck with the Gerber soft spout two handle cup. If you put milk in them, make sure to rinse them out right away otherwise they can develop ick up inside the spout that is near impossible to get out. I don't think it is bad to use a sippy cup provided that you offer an open cup periodically ( I did that once a month) in order to assess readiness to move on.

I couldn't find a soft sippy cup that didn't leak so I started using the Take and Toss cups with handels. Not only are they cheap but they don't leak and last just as long.
I tought my children how to drink from a straw by dipping my straw in water and holding the top to cature the water in the straw and then slowely letting it drip in their mouthes. After a few times they get the hang of it and they start sucking the water out of the straw before I let my finger off the top.
This technique also works when you are at a restaurant and you forget their cup at home or in the car.
Good Luck and God Bless!

Pay good attention to what Maureen had to say! I agree with her 100% and am so glad that someone with her level of expertise has spoken up about this issue.
We started introducing our grandson to sipping from a glass without a top when he was seven or eight months old. At 15 months of age now, he sits at the table with the other children and hold his own glass and drinks out of it with almost no spilling. I use inexpensive regular sturdy - glass - juice glasses for all the children I watch. They are sitting at a low children's table so if they do happen to drop a glass the probability of it breaking is lessened. If a glass does happen to break, we simply make the children sit quietly in their seats while one of us picks up all the glass, and assure the children that it's ok, and accidents do happen. Our philosophy is that children don't learn as well when too overprotected. We don't allow children to walk around the house while eating or drinking. It isn't all that difficult to teach them to sit at a table for those things, and we feel it's better for them.
I much prefer straw cups to sippys. The only time I find that it's really nice to have a straw cup available is when the grandchildren spend the night and would like to have a cup of water handy in case they wake up thirsty in the middle of the night.

C.

Both my boys have Bi-Lateral Cleft Lip & Palate and are unable to get much suction. My oldest is 8 and has leared over the years how to use cups and can even use a straw now. My youngest is 1 1/2 and uses the born free (without any leaking) but also uses a Tupperware sippy cup and has done very well on it. You might try using one of those, we have the ones with the white dome lids.

Hi C.,
Your children never need to use sippy cups. In fact, the occupational therapists at California Pacific Med Center's feeding clinic specifically recommended we go from a bottle to a straw cup as sippy cups do not teach any new skills than a bottle. Our son stayed with a bottle until about 18 months (adjusted, meaning from his due date, not his birth date), I believe, and then transitioned to a straw cup. My son (now 5.5 years) was born at 29 weeks, and as such, was provided with developmental screening at CPMC. It turned out that, while he was an early talker, he had slight oral motor skill deficits related to eating. He was super late with solids. Anyway, point is that I was concerned that he wasn't able to use a sippy cup, and I couldn't understand how he could be expected to given how hard it is to drink from one of those things. The OTs at the clinic didn't see the need for any baby, not just those with oral motor skill deficits, to use a sippy cup from a developmental standpoint. There is no need for a transitional item between bottles and straw cups. Based on this experience, my advice would be to wait a couple more months and then try again with a straw cup. If other parents wonder why your daughter is still drinking from a bottle, that is their issue. No one gave me any grief about it, though.

Mrs. C.... I kind of had the same problem... my son just turned 3 in Dec. and I took him off the bottle
at 1, tried to give him every sippy cup on the market, nothing... he loved his straws.. so i bouth sippy cups with straws, then about 6-8 months ago, i pulled out a sippy cup and thought lets see (it had cars or spider man on it) and it took, i know it is so hard to be patient, and you see all these other children doing what we want our children to do... but we just have to remember they are all different and they are going to do it when they are ready. The only advice i can really give is maybe have a play date, and at snack time bring out sippy cups (ones they have picked out) and see how that goes... monkey see monkey do! Good luck... do you have any potty training advice??? i know you have girls... i have a 9 year old girl... but this little guy will only go on the potty for mom???

My daughter went from the Munchkin silicone-top cups (similar to the Nubby cups) to the Playtex Soft Spout cups with no problem. The Playtex spout is actually quite firm, but the material is rubber-firm rather than hard plastic-firm. The Playtex cups have two handles that are easy to grip because they are open at the bottom, and mine have never leaked. There's a silicon plunger on the inside of the cup that plugs the spout, so sucking is required but the cup is spillproof. Or you can remove the plunger, so no sucking is required but the cup can spill from the spout if overturned.

I personally haven't tried them, but someone recommended these to someone else on another yahoo group that I am part of. I can tell you that most liquids that come from sippy cups are gross - they taste like plastic - which means that your baby is ingesting chemicals that are not good for her. This is a link to a site that sells sippy cups that are stainless steel - a lot healthier!HTH

http://www.greenfeet.com/itemMatrix.asp?ic=8502-06591-000...

Our daughter figured out the straw when we had a Jamba Juice and she really wanted some! Something thick and tasty in the straw might help you teach her.

Hi C., we also tried the nuby cups which leak a lot and my son didn't like to hold it either, we had luck with the playtex sippy. The spout is not soft, but he took to it right away and even held it on his own. A few months later he started using the straw cups(also playtex). Good Luck!

The Tilty Cup found at www.tiltycup.com is great. Safe plastic, and very inexpensive. They do leak if you turn them upside down, but otherwise I highly recommend.

Sam

My daughter could "just do" a straw too. But my son had to be taught. We used a smoothie becasue it is thick and will stay in the straw. I sucked it alsmost to the top of the straw and then passed it to him. This way he did not have to suck for a long time before he got something. We only had to do it once for him to get they idea.