Honey bear straw cup?

DixieNormous330

DD's SLP is working with her using a honey bear straw cup. I've never used one. I just ordered her one (they're on order for DD's program and they will send one home for us as soon as they come in but with Sandy seems a lot of things are backed up).  Can anyone tell me about their experiences with this? Kiddo gagged/choked/hated it? Loved it and forever took drinks only from a plastic bear?

mommy06

My dd has one and I did not find it very helpful for her. We just tried every sippy cup on the market until we found one she liked nuby We are now starting to just try giving her drink from a cup, she never could grasp the idea o a straw.

DixieNormous330

Her SLP doesn't want to use a sippy because she needs the straw for oral-motor development.

Seriously, this is going to make a 45 minute drink session even longer.

Assembly_Reqd

Nate has low tone and some paresis around the face. In a perfect world, sure, straws are needed to develop oral tone. However, is the fact that my kid cannot purse his lips enough to drink from a straw a skill he needs to succeed? NO.

You can give it a whirl. We have the honey bear, but guess what? You need four hands to operate. One to hold/control/squeeze the bottle, one to purse the lips, one to hold the child in place while they drink, and one to make sure they don't pull out the straw when they bite down and pull back. Also, add an extra eyeball into the mix to verify that there is a lip seal around the straw and drinking can happen. The only time I can get the honey bear to work is if I have help doing it. It ain't gonna happen.

This is a hill I am NOT willing to die on. Find a sippy that works for your DD and tell the SLP to "Suck it". Good Luck!

MaxandRuby

Way back when, EI used an empty and thoroughly cleaned out Honey Bear plastic jar (what honey actually came in) and clear fish aquarium tubing (cut to straw size) as a straw. This is what we used to teach DS2 to use a straw. We still have it and use it on occasion to this day.  I don't know what the actual honey bear straw cup is so I have no help with that!

ETA: So I have now googled this and it is basically what we used. EI told me it was a honey bear and fish aquarium tubing. I assumed it was an actual honey jar completely cleaned out but maybe it wasn't after all! I'm not dealing with the exact same issues as the pp is and happened to have found it fairly easy to use. We weren't using it to necessarily gain oral motor function though. Our goal was simply getting him to learn how to drink from a straw. And the fish aquarium tubing is harder to bite through which would cut off the liquid. 

mommy06

Don't forget the had needed to clean up the mess. It is definitely not easy to use:

st.augbride

We used this and had some luck with it. Our speech therapist actually made her own for us using the same straw but with a small hair dye bottle. This was nice b/c we could squeeze it a little bit and get liquid to come through the straw, which taught him how to use it. For us, it worked better than the honeybear (but the honeybear was better than other things we had tried). Now ds can drink well out of any straw.

kchoi

st.augbride:

We used this and had some luck with it. Our speech therapist actually made her own for us using the same straw but with a small hair dye bottle. This was nice b/c we could squeeze it a little bit and get liquid to come through the straw, which taught him how to use it. For us, it worked better than the honeybear (but the honeybear was better than other things we had tried). Now ds can drink well out of any straw.

this is what we did for DS1(who has Down syndrome)...and actually that's how DS2 learned as well.  we used aquarium tubing for the straw.