Learning To Use A Sippy Cup

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At six month’s old I introduced Nick to a sippy cup.  He wouldn’t take water, but sometimes he’d try a taste of juice.  Still he didn’t do much more than take a tiny swallow here and there and play with the cup (which resulted in sticky juice everywhere).  By thirteen months I wasn’t sure what to do.  At his12 month well visit Nick’s doctor said we might have to cut the bottle out cold turkey to get him to get rid of it.  I wasn’t against the idea, but it was becoming obvious that Nick wasn’t using the cup because he couldn’t figure out how and not just because he didn’t want to.  When I noticed him licking the hole in the cup, the way a hamster licks the hole in it’s water bottle, I realized something needed to be done.

At the beginning of the year when Nick wouldn’t drink from his sippy cups I tried a few different styles, but nothing seemed to help.  Still I decided to pull back out the Playtex Lil’ Gripper Straw Cup that I had tried months ago.  Originally he had wanted nothing to do with it, but this time he was excited to get milk out of it (what I love about this cup is that there is a place for the parent to squeeze the cup to make the liquid come up).  He wasn’t getting a lot, but it was more than he had ever had from a cup before.  He even liked to put the straw in his mouth.  Here and there he would try to suck on the straw himself, but he never did it hard enough to get anything out, so mostly he just chewed on it.  Still I was excited by our progress, and I felt it was a matter of time before he truly figured it out.

About two weeks after I had reintroduced the straw cup Nick went to Nana’s house for a day since both Jason and I were working.  I didn’t send Nick’s sippy cup since my mother had an old Tupperware sippy cup that was easy to use because it had a long line instead of a small hole for the liquid to come out of.  It had been made even bigger over the years from being chewed on by its previous users.  In that one day, due to that wonderful cup, Nick finally learned how to use a sippy cup.  I never could understand how a child that had used a bottle his entire life couldn’t figure out how to suck on a sippy cup, but with that Tupperware cup it all finally clicked for him.  By the end of the day he was floating away from liquid because all he wanted to do all day was drink from that cup.  If he even saw it he’d get hysterical until he got a drink from it.

Now he is able to use his sippy cups every day.  In fact he now drinks at least half if not the whole cup over the course of the day.  He loves using a cup, and now the only bottle he gets is the one right before bed.  Learning to use a sippy cup was difficult for Nick, and it was a bit of a stressful process for both of us.  Still it did eventually happen, and we’re both happier for it.  Now if only I could get him to pick the cup up and drink it without my help…one step at a time I guess.