Need Ideas on Getting Toddler to Take Regular Sippy Cup

Hi G., I recently went through this same issue but with an actual bottle and the smoothie pacifer. the exception was my son was almost 2 1/2. he was so addicted to them he would not go to bed without both in his hands. he would chew holes in the pacifiers and we were worried that he would cut off a chunck at night and choke himself. We tried cold turkey..didn't work, we tried comprimising...wouldn't work. so here is what we did: we live near a railroad track and my son LOVES train (i guess what 2 yr old boy doesn't). so for a week or so I would drive down to the tracks and let him watch the train go by. Then one day I took him down there and before I knew the train was coming I had him throw his bottle to the tracks and when the train went by, we waved and said "bye ba-ba".....he asked for his bottle one time after that and I just told him "your baba went byebye on the train". about a month later we did the same with his pacifier, and in a matter of a month he was off of both. i wish i woul dhave done it sooner!! you just have to find something he's in to. my cousin's live in california and they go to disneyland all the time and they threw their sons pacifier in the bushes by it's a small world because that's his favorite ride. find something he's into, talk it over with him, then have a bye-bye cup ceremony and see if that works :)

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Not that there is anything wrong with sippy cups, but since he is going on 2 maybe you would consider giving him regular cups to drink out of. He would need supervision, and wouldn't be able to just wander around with them, but it might be a good next step. Once he is using regular cups, if you want him to have a sippy cup in the car or something, give him a hard spout one and I think he will probably take it no problem.

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what I had to do with my son was to put just water(in our case it was his bottle) in what you don't want him drinking out of and his juice or milk in the cup you want him using. My Hunter figured out real quick which cup the stuff he wanted to drink came out of he was off the bottle in less then a week. Hope this helps...
Jesi

1 mom found this helpful

Have you tried giving him a cup with a lid and a straw? My lo would not take a sippy cup also.The only option we had was to try a cup with a lid and a straw. He liked being able to see his drink coming up the straw. Hope this helps!

M.
Proud Member of The MOM Team

Maybe try "throwing them away" in front of him and tell them they are all "broken" because he chewed on them. Bring out the regular cups and tell him these won't break so this is his new cup. When he's not around you could pull the cups back out and hide them if you want or keep them thrown away so you won't have a choice. At that age he will understand that they are broken.

Have you tried straw cups, becaue they always think that is fun. If not, your best bet is to go cold turkey.

All four of my kids handled the change differently. One of my sons sounds similar, and we did two things: 1) when we can watch him we used a small plastic cup 2) we took him to the store and let him pick his own cup with lid. Turned out he picked a Tonka one and that did the trick. Good luck!

I am having the same problem. I want you to know that you are not alone. i have tried the straws and it is not working for me at this time. I just keep offering it to him. I am hoping that eventually he will catch on.

I agree with the first poster....skip "regular" sippy cups altogether and just move onto straws and/or regular cups. we are making that transition with our daughter. She drinks like a fish though and with a 7 month old it's hard to watch her constantly so we are starting with meal times, she gets regular cups.

Instead of a sippy cup, try a regular cup with a straw. You may have to watch him more carefully with it so he doesn't spill. But my son really liked the novelty of a straw. He is two & 1/2 and he only drinks from regular cups now. He is also very good about not spilling.

Hi- I've been through this 4 times...what I did was make a huge deal out of them going to the store with me to pick out their big girl/boy sippy cups -I also talk to them about how we take care of them so- i didnt have problems with them chewing up the tips...so maybe you could help them find the ones with the hard plastic mouth spout.

My sister-in-law has her education in early childhood development, and told me not to use Nuby. She said straight to hard spouts, because Nuby is too much like a bottle with the soft spout. At a year I put the bottles away and gave her only hard spout sippys. I had no protest from her at all. So, I guess cold turkey and hard spout cups are the way to go. He may protest but stick to your guns, and it will be easier in the long run! Good Luck!

One more with the advice of a regular cup. My daughter was taught at a Montessori infant care and she was using a regular cup before she was a year old. They started with Shot glasses. I did this with her younger sister and it worked perfectly. We don't use sippy cups. They are 3 years old and 20 months. good luck.

For both my kids I had to start with straw cups. Now I will admit my kids were weird and most kids don't transfer this way; but it worked for them. Then once they started tipping their straw cups I moved them to a reagular sippy.

My daughter is 19 months and I am going through the same thing as you. She constantly chews on the spouts and i am constantly buying new ones since you just can't buy the spout part. Then last night my son had one of those sippy cups that are from gerber I think where it is a use and throw away type of sippy cup and my daughter got interested in it. The spout it hard like a sippy cup and when i gave it to her she of course started chewing on it but when she realized when she sucked on it the milk came out of it and now since last night I can not get the cup out of her hand. She thinks its great that she figured it out. I would introduce those cups to him and see if he shows any interest in it.

Will he drink out of a straw? My 16 mo old using the no spill cups that have the collapseble straw and does really good with those.

An open cup might be a good idea. We do it without the straw, but you could do with. We still use sippy cups for in the car. Otherwise, the rule is, the cup sits on the highchair and he can drink it in the kitchen. We still keep milk in the fridge and just offer it often.

Places like Target and WalMart sell I believe it is called Gerber Take-n-Toss. They are plastic multi-colored cups/plates/forks/etc. You've seen them I'm sure. One thing they have are cups with tight fitting lids and straws. This might be worth a try. My toddler does fine with sippy cups - I'm trying to get him good with using a cup with a straw, and these specific ones seem good because even when he tries to tip the cup up (like you would with a sippy or regular cup) they don't immediately spill the contents. This might help save you on buying cups over and over as well as saving your floors and furniture.