Sippy, Straw, Training cups...

pb_bride

M turned 1 recently.  He has been drinking water out of a sippy cup for months now, and he's very good at it (holds his own cup, tips it back to get the last drop).

Recently, we started WCM in a sippy "bottle" - it's a different brand than his sippy cup.  It's actually a glass bottle that we can screw on a sippy sprout.  He has no trouble drinking milk out of that.

When we go to "class," I see that many of his classmates drink out of straw cups and training cups.  So I'm wondering, should I switch him to those?  Or change it up, ie, some days he gets sippy, some days he gets straw?  I don't know when I should be introducing him to straw cups or training cups!!!  I've had others warn me that it's PITA to clean straw cups if they are used for milk.  

Help please?

Ruthie04

We use straw cups and have been using them for water and milk. I read some speech pathologist discussing the benefits of straw cups over traditional sippy cups and I figured they'd have to learn anyway, so we just never really focused on sippy spouts. Plus, those lazy bums never wanted to tip their bottles back. Anyway, One of my boys grasped it immediately, one took a few days of me working with him (I used a straw from my glass of water) to get it.

In all honesty, straw cups are a PIA to clean and they almost always leak a little. We use the Zoli Bot ones for water and the Nuby flip ones for milk. I like the Zoli Bot ones because they are easy for them to open and they leak a lot less than others, but the straw is really thin and it sucks to change it out. Plus, you have to get the top threaded just right or it leaks so much. The Nuby ones have a wider straw that they have to bite to get. I've heard it's not a good starter straw cup because of the bite/suck issue, but my boys only needed a minute to figure it out since they'd been using the Zoli ones for awhile. The Nuby ones do leak (I read that you can address this with assembly tricks, but I haven't tried) and milk gets stuck if you aren't super careful. It's also hard for them to get the last drop.

HTH!

ccam

We do water out of a take and toss sippy and milk out of a straw cup.  I find that DS sips water way too fast through a straw and ends up choking/coughing.  DS caught onto the straw before the sippy, so I'm not quite sure what the "rules" are. 

I just make sure the big pieces of a straw cup can be put in the dishwasher and I clean the straw pieces by hand with one of these...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004QZBEBY/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

ELF4321

DD only uses straw cups because she never got the hang of tipping the sippy back to drink (this is the kid who NEVER would hold her own bottles either!). We started with water in the small Playtex straw cups that you can squeeze a little bit to help her learn. She still likes those for water, but we use Munchkin and Take n Toss straw cups for milk, which she only has with meals and snacks because they are not spill proof. They're pretty easy to clean compared to some of the non-spill sippies. We use the Dr. Brown's little brushes to clean the inside of the straw.

PennyLane26

We went straight from bottle to straw cup. No advice about milk as we haven't gotten to that point yet, but we we water in the 7 oz OXO straw cup and she loves it. It's been fairly easy to clean so far IMO.

kmc84

A was using a sippy for BM at 3.5 months and a straw for water at 7.5 months. She never took a bottle.

We use the take and toss straw cups and the playtex lil gripper straw cup. The playtex one I trust enough to throw into my diaper bag. The take and toss hardly leak at all when it gets tipped over.

ETA: I put the straws in the bottle basket in the top rack. It has a straw holder to keep them upright.