Transitioning to sippy cup
I'm currently trying to transition my 11 month old to a sippy cup. It's not going very well. I leave out a straw cup and a sippy cup for him to explore. So far, he'll carry it around, but he won't actually drink out of it. I tried putting his formula in the…
I'm currently trying to transition my 11 month old to a sippy cup. It's not going very well. I leave out a straw cup and a sippy cup for him to explore. So far, he'll carry it around, but he won't actually drink out of it. I tried putting his formula in the sippy cup and he screamed until we switched it to his bottle. My others didn't have trouble taking to a sippy cup or straw cup, so definitely looking for advice, tips, whatever. My goal is to get rid of his bottle when he turns 1 like I did with my others. Thank you! (Don't really know what flair to use lol)
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Mine refused to drink milk out of a sippy cup, but would take juice or water from one. So we just weaned her off a milk bottle, gave her water/juice in a sippy, and met her dairy needs with yogurt pouches and cottage cheese for a while. Once she got used to the sippy, and hadn't had a bottle for a long time, she started drinking milk from the sippy.
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Sometimes they just don’t understand it. Put it to his mouth and slowly tip it back so he can experience that thats how it works
Sippy cups aren’t really recommended these days by OTs, PTs, or SLPs because they don’t promote a drinking/sucking/swallowing pattern that is useful in the long term. An open cup may be better. You can model how to drink from it, using two hands to bring it to your mouth. Did you introduce water alongside solids at 6 months? That’s why we introduced the open cup. I would try that. For introducing straws, many people have success with the honey bear straw cup that you can squeeze while the straw is in their mouth to teach them that liquid comes from the straw. We started with open cups of water first though because it was easier for him to understand what we were doing and to model it for him because what was happening wasn’t hidden inside an opaque cup and straw. Really lean into having your baby copy what you’re doing.
I don't know what bottles you use, but some of them have transition nipples that you can swap to so they are still getting the feel of a nipple during the feed but it is changing the way they suck or the shape of the top of the bottle, which might help? We used Nuk with my oldest and my youngest is using Mam and they both have a "system" that allows that transition. We also heavily relied on them holding their own bottles during feeds with handles with all of the nipples/spouts towards the end, but when first introducing them we held the bottle for them to ease them in. Another thing that helped with my oldest and straw cups was pulling up water into the straw and capturing it with our finger then letting them catch it in his mouth so he could figure out that there was something in the cup he wanted. He was also super picky about which straw cup he would use for a while which meant I had a cup graveyard and it was frustrating.