My 13 Mo Old Just Wont Drink Milk from Sippy Cup- Its Been 4 Days of Cold Turkey

Hi,my son did the same for a while. It was becouse he associated water to sippy, and milk to bottle. His ped recomended to forget all about milk for one week, and than give him a new sippy (diferent color/shape from the water one) with plain whole milk. That worked fine.
Also, sometimes I mix chocolate, but I don't want him to need the chocolat (know what I mean? ), so he is now 20 mo and I give chocolat onle a few times a week.

Try 1/2 packet of carnation instant breakfast in his milk. My son wouldn't take plain white milk at all in a sippy cup. I put a little of the powder in there, and he was in love. lol The instant breakfast has a lot of vitamins and protein, too so he will get good nutrition from it. Once he starts taking that, you can try other flavors. Best of luck!

G., please give your son his bottle. Make it like he likes it (no chocolate or vanilla) and hold him and rock him and let him suck to his hearts content. There is WAY more going on here then a bottle. Quit listening to the old wives out there and the doctors who own stock in sippy cups, who are telling you that at a year is some magic cut off for children to quit sucking and look around at the obese, the nail biters and the smokers in our culture that are STILL dealing with oral retentive problems! Not to mention the rejection problems stemming from this. Your son will give up the bottle before he goes to Jr. High School. I promise. Some babies just give it up early and some hang on and on. Your son CLEARLY is not ready to be weaned. You can NEVER go back, give him this. You won't regret it.

Have you tried teaching him to use a regular glass ... no sippy or straw at all? Sometimes this works better for children. He sees you drinking from that type of cup and it may seem like a big thing for him to drink the same way you do. I know it can get messy at 13 months of age, but it will likely be worth the trouble if he gets the idea. We actually started introducing the children in our childcare to a regular cup around 7 or 8 months of age, by sitting with them and helping them constantly for the first month or two. It doesn't take too long before they are ready to start handling the cup on their own, and by the time they were your son's age they were able to drink mostly on their own without much trouble. I think one advantage of starting so early is we were getting them accustomed to the cup before they were having to give up the bottle, so giving up the bottle was an easy transition rather than a power struggle. I know it's too late for that in your case, but give the regular cup a try and see if it will work for you and your son.

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A slow transition is over the course of weeks not a few days so I think you have rushed this a bit, but giving him back a few bottles so he can get his 18-24oz a day and doing a slower transition won't be a bad thing. A slow transition slowly dropping one bottle starting with the least favorite bottle. Drop one bottle every 1-7 days if he really resists go a little longer between dropping the next bottle. He might need the bottle to satisfy his suck need so I would allow him to still have a pacifier while you wean him from the bottle.

If you've completely taken the bottles away, I'd say to not give him one again. He'll not become mannourished w/in the time period that it'll take for him to become accustomed to taking it from some kind of cup. It sounds to me as if he already realizes that you'll do just about anything to get him to take milk (buying all kinds of cups, trying to slowly transition him, etc), and he's having fun with manipulating you! Some kids have this tendency innately -- especially if their mama is a 'pleaser' (Phlegmatic temperament person, as it sounds as if you are. I'm NOT! LOL I'm partly a 'choleric' - domineering, powerful personality!)

Quit making such a big deal of it. Just give him yogurt or cheese until he decides that he'd like to drink some milk from some cup. Let him tell you which cup and when he wants it. Give him water and/or juice or whatever healthy liquid he'll consume until he gets bored with trying to 'pull your strings'.

On the other hand, I nursed all 4 of our kids, and the 2 boys both nursed for 15-18 months (girls were pretty much done at a year). As long as they'll sit or lay still and DRINK it -- not walk around with it as their 'side-kick' -- they may still need to nurse for their healthy emotional development.

We just went through this and decided to try chocolate milk in the sippy, worked like a charm and is now my daughter's favorite.

I'm having trouble with this myself. One problem we discovered is the new Nuby nipple parts have a firmer silicon center with two X cuts in it. The old ones are an oval with three straight cuts in it. Our twins would use the old ones with juice or water, but not milk. We bought some new ones and went cold turkey and they wouldn't drink anything. On Christmas I tried to get Victoria to drink juice. She took one "sip" and put it down. I picked it up and told her I was going to drink it then. I pretended to- no reaction- so I really took a sip- nothing came out!!!You have to BITE the stupid thing to be able to get anything out of the new tops! I was so mad. I don't want my girls learning to bite to drink. I gave the bottles back because it was all that we had at the in-laws house other than the non-working cups. We have gone to the Gerber ones with the hard spout. The flow is great and real cups are hard anyway. I took all the New Nubys we had bought and traded them for Nuby cups with straws or Gerbers. We are still not completely off the bottle, but we are doing better. At least my girls aren't dehydrated. I felt terrible for the three days without water or juice. (I broke down on the milk because they wouldn't -couldn't- drink anything out of those new ones.) We have also been told that they would break themselves.....tempting.

I don't understand why everyone is making such a big fuss over milk in a bottle for toddlers. If he does not drag the bottle around with him and takes bottle only before or after bed/nap time, big deal. Maybe he associates it with security and comfort. My girls would drink milk from cups at Day Care and meal time but bottle before and after bed/nap time. Gradually I transition her into staw/sippy cup. My 18-month old is drinking her usual bottle of milk from the Nuby sport bottle sippy cup these days. Really, why subject yourself and child to "the standard". Take your time, he won't be on bottle forever, just like my daughter eventually slept through the night at the age of 2 year old.

I took my oldest 2 a couple weeks to warm up to the idea. Be patient. It will work.

I would say try a nuby straw cup...its easier for the kids and it makes your life easy as you don't have to have the sippy every where you go!! It does take 5-10 days though

Mine did much better with straw cups than sippies. I also think that the regular cup with you helping is a good idea. Mine wouldn't drink milk at that age either. We had always given water in his straw cups so when it was milk he refused. He was breastfed with very few bottles, so it wasnt like he wanted a bottle, he just didnt want milk in a cup. My doctor had me try oj that is fortified with Vit D and Calcium. Tropicana is not from concentrate. Other than the protein milk has, the nutritional value is pretty much the same as milk. So I did the oj, lots of broccoli, yogurt, cottage cheese (blended up with fruit b/c he hated the curds) and regular cheese. And I just kept offering milk in a straw cup once or twice a day and eventually he just took it. It took him a couple mos though. So I only put like a sip in the cup so that I wasn't throwing so much out.

I guess since you went cold turkey, there's no turning back now. I woudl supplement his dairy on other ways through the day...yogurt, cheeses, cottage cheese & fruit, etc. so he's getting calcium.

If you're ready to try bribery--what about mixing 1/3 vanilla milk mixed with his regular milk and call it something different. We did that for my son (he was never a big fan of plain milk) and we called it "moo."

Have you tried the single serving Horizon Organic milks? They have their own little straw.

My son was the same way, He would drink anything but milk in a sippy cup, so I just continued to give him his milk in the bottle a little while later he was sick for about a week and could not have milk, so when that time period was up I told him you haven't had a bottle in a week how about drinking your milk in a big boy cup, not a sippy cup and of course I helped him but when he got use to it, he started drinking it out of a sippy cup so that he could carry it around and take it with him places, granted my son was a little older then yours. alls you can do is try.

I don't really understand why doctors insist that we take away our baby's bottle at 12 months old. They claim it's bad for their mouth or teeth or whatever. I don't see what the big deal is if they suck on a bottle 3 or 4 times a day. Lots of kids suck their thumbs or pacifiers all day long and they don't make us take away their pacifier or surgically remove their thumb (just kidding).

Maybe your son just isn't ready to give up his bottle. Maybe wait a month and try again. My son never drank out of a sippy cup but he did use a cup and straw. Try holding the cup for him, putting him on your lap and cuddling with him like you would if you were about to give him a bottle-just give him a cup/sippy cup instead.

It seems like us moms are being pressured into pushing our children to grow up ahead of thier time. Then we wonder why at eight they behave like they are 18.

Good luck with weaning him off his bottle.

I agree that going slow and replacing one bottle at a time (maybe once a week) with sippies is the best. Considering that he isn't drinking any milk right now, you may need to go against the normal advice of following through, and just start over.

I was very similar with weaning from the breast. He screamed and hated it, but after a couple days (we could only drop some of the meals during weekends because of my work), he was fine with it. I also didn't drop another until he was drinking from the sippy for the previous drop.

The sippy that really worked well with him (and we tried them all) was the Gerber Nuk. It is really soft on their mouth and they don't have to bite down to get the milk out, just suck like from the breast or bottle.

Chocolate milk will probably work. This is what my doctor recommended as my son would not drink white milk at all. I would not give him the bottle back at this point. You can just put a tiny bit of chocolate, vanilla, strawberry in it, just enough to make it enticing. Don't worry about him "never" taking regular milk again. He will. My son is only 2 but he switches back and forth and drinks plain milk all the time now too.