Transition from Bottle to Sippy Cup - Silverdale,WA

Dont' just offer the cup at meal times.

Just leave out several, on a low coffee table, where she plays. Get her acclimated to seeing it and even if she just plays with it.
Don't nag about it. Just leave it out.
That is how I "introduced" the sippy to my kids, from a younger age.
Then they took to it on their own.
Not forcing it.

Or try a straw cup. Some kids like that better.

I didn't give my kids juice either until way after 2 years old. And only watered down 50-50 with water.

All the best,
Susan

First of all, I don't know why pediatricians are so stuck on getting a baby completely off a bottle at 1yr old. Do they tell a breast feeding mom to wean at 1 year old no matter what? I did transition my daughter to a sippy cup at 1 yr for water during the day but at 2.5yrs she still gets a bottle at nap and bedtime when at home (she uses a sippy when at a babysitters or with Grandma). She drinks everything else from a sippy cup and honestly, the bedtime bottle is more for ME than her, she probably wouldn't put up much fight if I switched. I always treated her bottle like breastfeeding (probaby because I wanted to but couldn't bf), never left her to feed herself and always took it away once we were done. Anyway, we used the Avent trainer cup that has the handles and used her Avent bottle nipple at first so she got the hang of holding the cup while drinking. She did that fine, so after a few days I put the sippy cup top on and at first she wasn't sure what to think but once she took a big suck and realized something came out she went to town and we haven't looked back. One thing I found is that she really didn't like warm or room temp water. She likes it COLD, and putting ice in it made it interesting because it "rattled". The ice cold water also felt good on her teething gums so she had more incentive to drink it. Good luck, and don't stress about completely leaving the bottle (unless she just will NOT take a sippy, then you might have to do cold turkey). Try straw sippy cups too, some kids won't use a spout top but for some reason do great with straws.

Try offering her a normal cup some of the time, and skip the sippy all together. Maybe not at bedtime, but, say, at meal time. Put a little bit in the cup at a time, and help her learn how to drink it. Sometimes more different is easier to deal with than a little different.

I must admit, i don't really get why it would matter if a kid drank from a bottle, a sippy cup, or a normal cup, though. My doctor recommended moving to a normal cup by 18 months, though, too, and from what i've read, no transitional cups were used before recent decades, or are used in other parts of the world, so clearly its doable.

looks like you already got good advice, but i wanted to say that there is a wide range of what physicians recommend. the guidelines are just guidelines and averages are the middle mark- meaning just about everyone is above or below that. there are a lot of moms out there who adjust things to what feels right for your family and it all works out fine.

i found there was a big developmental difference between 12 and 15 mos- my son wasnt ready at 12 but was at 15. we started transitioning then but he still BF at bedtime until 17 mos and used a bottle part time til about 18 mos.
have you tried the Nuby sippy with the soft top- the top is made from plastic nipple-like material and my son really liked that. i held it for him the first few times and held him too, more like a bottle feeding. once he did that, he transitioned quickly and easily to other cup types and liked them better.

good luck!

I made the sippy cup something special. When my daughter resisted using it, I put in chocolate milk. Since that was a special treat, she drank it right away. After a day of that, I told her that she had to have a cup of regular milk first, and then she could have chocolate milk. After a couple days of that she had to have 2 cups regular and then she got a cup of chocolate. She was off the bottle totally in 2 days and would drink anything I gave her, even water, out of the sippy cup.

Good luck with the transition!

I agree to offer her a cup more often than just at meal times. You could try cold turkey one bottle at a time until she gets it. If she is thirsty, she'll eventullay try. My daughter who is 14 months wasn't interested in cups either and would choke on the liquid, spit it out etc. But, I just kept offering it to her everyday and pretty soon she got it down. Now we are down to one bottle in AM and one in PM and cups in the day.

I've been having the hardest time getting my daughter to transition to the sippy cup as well. I feel your pain!!!

But the strangest thing has been happening the past few days that give me hope (and maybe for you too). Although my daughter has completely refused the sippy cup, she has begun to reach for our water glasses as we drink. Although it's messy, she's been drinking from our glasses for a couple days now.

So my recommendation would be to wait until your child shows interest in any form of liquids and then encourage it naturally.

Good Luck!

Hi Lucy,

My son is 16 months and has just now transitioned to a straw sippy cup for milk. We tried around the 12 month mark and he went nuts - wouldn't touch the (hard spout) sippy cup and cried for about 20 minutes. Even though it was not ideal, we gave him a bottle of milk after that. We kept trying different brands of sippy cups throughout the following weeks with water during the day. He would take little sips but not really be interested in it. Just last week we decided to try going cold turkey again with the straw sippy cup and it worked! He wasn't thrilled and didn't drink much milk the first day, but by the second day he was thirsty and drank it all. Sorry for the long story, but I just wanted to say that maybe your daughter just isn't ready yet. The previous two posts had good advice about leaving out the sippy cups for her to pick up in her own time.

if you feel like it's time to get rid of the bottle, go for it but don't get hung up on the timelines that the ped gives you because all kids are different. i would go with the flow and keep the sippy cups around but if she's not into it, what's the rush?

we had friends who just flat out lied to the ped about taking away the bottle because they didn't want to get a lecture. they were able to transition their daughter to a sippy cup but they did it on their own time, when their daughter was ready.

potty training is another area where it's appropriate to wait until the child's ready, IMO. i hear all the time about parents who are in a rush to get their little one trained and start too early and just end up frustrated, with a lot of messes to clean up!

It took a while for my daughter to learn how to drink from a sippy cup and like it. We give her just water in it (she's almost 11 months) and she's used to it now. We've started trying a little milk in it, which she'll drink of, but she can tell it's different. :-)

Just keep trying. You've got some time. Worst case you can go cold turkey, but you never know, she may just come around if you just keep introducing it enough.

Good luck!