Thinking of weaning, 11 mo will NOT drink from a cup! - Infant Care (up to 18 months old) Message Board

WhiskersOnKittens · 04-10-2008, 07:22 PM

Hi everyone,

My title basically says it all. My 11 mo ds just refuses to drink from a cup, and I've been offering one to him (off and on) since he was about 6 months old! He just never really got the hang of it, I guess. He will sometimes drink if I hold the cup for him, but only if it's the cup--if there's a lid, he doesn't want anything to do with it. I've tried offering him water, juice and milk out of the cup, and it really doesn't seem to make a difference.
He is not breastfed (although he does exclusively get pumped milk), so I guess my issue is more that I'm thinking about breaking the bottle habit (and all 5000 pieces that go along with it!). I've been making a point of offering his cup and breakfast, lunch and dinner for the past week or so every day, and he's not making too much progress. Some days he'll just push it away, but then he'll suck on his thumb indicating that he's wanting a bottle.
Does anybody have any advice? Anybody go through the same thing?

Whiskers

meechieny · 04-10-2008, 07:34 PM

Are you offering a sippy cup with a hard plastic lid and spout? My daughter had a hard time transitioning to a cup like that. What we ended up doing is getting her sippy cups that have a silicon top/spout that is similar to a bottle nipple. We found them at Walmart. They are made by "Nuby" I'm not sure if you have Walmart in Canada or you are near the US boarder. You could always check out their online site or try "Nuby" directly. These are only only ones that I have seen like this. I hope this is helpful

Good luck.

Tiff24 · 04-10-2008, 08:58 PM

If you haven't tried Nuby, I highly recommend it! He might be more likely to use the soft spout, like "meechieny" said. They have a ton of different sippy cups. My son loves the "no spill flip it straw cap" sippy cups. We switched him to those when when he was about 9 or 10 months.

When we decided to switch our son to sippy's we started with the nuby "wash or toss" because it was really easy for him to drink from it. Someone on here recommended giving him his morning bottle in a sippy, when I knew he was really hungry. He ended up being hungry enough that he didn't care what he was drinking out of. We gradually just switched his three bottle feedings to sippy's with no problem. You might want to try that. It worked great for us.

mcr285 · 04-10-2008, 10:29 PM

when i started my kids on sippies, they had no idea what to do with them. i took the valve out of their cups for awhile (always when they were strapped in their highchairs to keep the mess to a minimum!). after a few times, they started to get the hang of it....

don't stress too much about breaking the bottle habit (though you might want to switch to a less complicated bottle now that he's older) so soon. i don't know why there is such a trend to switch to cups before a year old, but it really drives me crazy! there is just no reason for it! my sister's doctor threatened to drop her kids if she didn't quit using the bottle with them by a year old (she decided to drop the doctor instead!). i didn't switch my kids exclusively to cups until they were over 2 years old (they used cups for juice, but bottles for milk).

anyway, i'll jump off the soap box now before i really get started!