Toddler Refuses Sippy Cup -- Will Only Take a Bottle

hi there
my daughter was the same way, she is 22mths now and we have got down just one. what worked for us is adding just a little chocolate milk to sippy to make it special. It did take alittle work but it helped. good luck

I had the same problem and my son ended up taking a Nuby brand sippy cup. It has a soft silicon spout so it was very similar in feel to the bottle that we weaned him from. You can find them at Target, Walmart, Albertsons. Good luck.

Change your pediatrician! i don't see what's the big deal is? i know several moms whos children drank out of the bottle past 18months old,eventually they gave it up.and you say she drinks out of the sports bottle? so give her the sports bottle!that's what we adults use so she a step ahead of other toddlers!
M..

Not sure it is really that she's stubborn or just completely normal.

My son weaned himself off the bottle at around 18 months when I started giving him milk in a cup and a bottle (Nubystyle cups)...they do it when they are ready and really a doctor should be a little more understanding. My little dude still occasionally asked for his bottle and I would give it to him with juice, so he could see they were interchangeable.

I think if you worry about timelines than you're putting pressure on yourself and your little one. Just use patience and love to guide her through this transition and eventuallu she'll be over the bottle. I think if she only needs it during the day, then you are half way there. But, if you're still using it at night work on getting her to get comfy with the cup first before taking it awat completly.

As for the milk, my son didn't like milk until recently. And, it took a lot of trying things like Jacy B. mentioned and eventually he started to drink it plain a few months ago...

Oh, and one other thing I just thought of...I bought ten million cups and when I started using and offering just one with repition and consistency it was easier.

Good luck and don't worry about it if she doesn't make it 'on time'. She's doing what she knows best and that's sticking to what's safe and comfy.

Don't worry...you guys will transition in time...it took my son a few solid weeks of consistency and he was prety much weaned by around 18 mos. But, the bottle didn't disappear totally until about 20-22 months.

Good luck!!

What is the hurry? I really don't understand the conventional wisdom that says that you need to get rid of the bottles by a certain age. My kids both would chug a whole bottle, but when I gave them sippy cups, they would sip, then most of it would go to waste. I get that their teeth will corrode if they go to sleep while drinking, but that is not the issue here. There will come a day when you can talk to her and you can go shopping together and pick out the coolest cups that she can use for milk (and she must understand that this means bye bye bottles) but my kids were older than 2 when this happened. I wouldn't stress about eliminating the bottles if I were you, there are lots of other things to worry about!

When you say she "needs 16-18 oz whole milk a day" I am not sure why. When my kids transitioned to to milk they def. drank a lot less. But the thing is , they eat more food to make up for it. A child will not let itself go hungry. I should say my kids were small--10-15%. But they didn't get any smaller--they always grew on their same trajectory. Their pediatrician was wonderful: she did object to their drinking only 8 or so ounces of milk a day. Try yogurts, cheese and other foods rich in calcium to make up the difference. I had a friend whose son drank NO MILK. He would drink calcium fortified oj and chocolate soy milk until he was 4. If the barrier to getting her off the bottle is your concerns about not drinking enough, I think you should reconsider. She may be stubborn, but be sure to remember that you are in control :)

have you tried flavoring her milk with just a tiny bit of chocolate or stawberry flavoring. its totally normal to see them refuse it. have you tried the nuby cups? they have soft spouts just like a bottle. they also have one thats a soft straw that almost looks like a bottle nipple maybe try that if you havent. you can also try giving her nothing but the milk all day no water no juices. she will catch on soon. good luck! i was a very lucky mommy my lil one was off the bottle buy 7 months it took 3 days.

try and snip a very tiny part of the rubber off the nipple every few days until there isn't a nipple left. As you do this offer same drink in a regular or sippy cup as well. Eventually she will understand that the bottle is no longer an option. Also encourage her that she is a "big girl now" and that big girls don't drink from a bottle. This snip technique also works great with pacifiers. The reason why is because they can no longer get the suction sensation so it is no longer appealing. Good luck!!

My son will only drink from a straw sippy cup. Our favorite is the Platex cups. Your daughter might also prefer to mimic you, as my son does. He likes drinking out of a regular cup and a regular straw... but we only let him while in a high chair so the mess (if any) is contained. He is getting much better at it and he is nearly as old as your daughter.
He is still on a bottle in the morning and at night, though we are to the point that we don't really need the night-time bottle anymore.
Good Luck!

I would try sticking to one sippy cup. Also, as long as she eats food with calcium, then I wouldn't worry so much about the milk. If you give her milk with her meals, just give it to her in a sippy cup....if she's thirsty, she will drink.
Also, tell her what you are doing, if yo are replacing teh water with milk, tell her before she is surprised with the change. Kids seem to do better when they are forwarned. My 18 month old does.
OR.... you can just simply tell her that there is no more bottles. I took away the bottle at 14 month. It just seemed like the right time.
good luck!

We took our first 2 kids off the bottle at 12 months, no problem transitioning to a sippy cup. Child #3, however, had different ideas. He drank nothing for 3 days; not milk, juice or water. Finally he gave in to juice & water, but refused milk completely. He only recently began drinking milk from a cup or straw and he is 26 months. In the meantime, we gave him yogurt & cheese to fulfill his calcium requirements. You can try flavoring the milk and see if it helps. Check with your pediatrician and see what he/she says, but it is important to get them off the bottle.

My daughter is 19 months old and still takes her milk in a bottle. I have tried giving her milk in a sippy cup, but she throws it on the floor. The only thing she will drink from a sippy cup is plain water. Everything I have read about the bottle is that the doctor's want your child off the bottle because they "sip" the beverage from it, but with a cup they drink the beverage faster. My daughter is the exact opposite. She sits in my lap and drinks a bottle in 5 - 10 minutes, but if I give her a sippy cup she sips on it all day. Doctor's recommend that you breastfeed for at least 12 months, but I have never heard one say that you have to stop by a certain age. Since bottle time is our special bonding time I am treating it like breastfeeding. I figure that as long as she doesn't go to first grade with a bottle its fine. Hang in there and do what you think is best for you and your child not what the doctors or anyone else thinks you "should" do.

My daughter had this same issue. We asked the pediatrician what to do and her response was that it was MORE IMPORTANT that she get the nutrition of the milk, than that she not be on the bottle. So we let her keep the bottle until after her second birthday. THEN when we transistioned her off the bottle, she basically gave up milk completely. She will not drink anything over than water. We then introduced calcium supplements and are real watchful of the other sources of calcium in her diet to make up for it. It was not easy to accept, but she just wont drink milk. Occasionaly, she'll have milk out of the box (the ones like juice boxes) for the novelty of it, but she doesn't even drink a full juice box ever, let alone a full milk box. She is totally healthy, growing right on track, does not seem to be lacking anything and its been over 1.5 years since she regularly drank milk. Its certainly not ideal, but its not the end of the world. If you cannot get her to drink enough milk from a cup at this age, I would stick with the bottle as her health is much more important!

Again, same issue with my daughter. She ended up giving up milk for a few months, but would drink soy milk from a sippy. So this lasted a few months, then gradually I added milk to the soy milk, until she was back to milk. You can try it will rice milk, if you don't like the idea of giving all that soy. But do what you feel is right; if YOU don't care about the bottle, then let your child keep it. As long as she doesn't sleep with it, I kind of think it isn't an issue.

I have 2 kids who LOVED thier bottles. The only cup I could get them to take was the Nubby cups. Then after a few months they went to the hard regular sippy cups. They were both around 12 mos.

Happy Thanksgiving LA mom, first of all let me say this, I think had you taken her off the bottle by a year, she would have done fine with a cup, so now what, well you can pretend the milk is yours, kids love eating and drinking things that belong to someone else, you never want to force a child to eat or drink something, so you have to trick them sometimes, for example when my brother was little le loved gravy but didn't like potatoes, so my mom always,ade sure that there was no white showning. If that does not work you can try rewarding her for drinking her milk. This is my personal opinion as a mom of 25 years get rid of the bottle. I think one reason she doesn't drink milk from her cup is because she knows she will get a bottle, but what if that changed? she may go a few days, of not wanting her cup but eventually she will use it, you justput the milk it leave it where she can get it, and on her own she will eventually drink her milk from it, J. L.

We went cold turkey from the bottle when my daughter was 16 months old. We went on a cruise and only brought sippy cups. She had no choice, asked for the bottle a couple of times for a few days, and then was fine with the sippy cup.

Hi L. Y,

Just keep trying. She will eventually take the sippy cup. (She won't be in high school drinking her bottle!) Meanwhile let her still use her bottle if she won't take the sippy cup. It is probably comforting to her. There are plenty of 2 year olds that still drink from a bottle and they are fine. Let your daughter transition on her terms. This isn't a health issue - it's a preference issue. Some doctors would tell you to let her have the bottle as long as she wants. I'm convinced my neice has an eating disorder from when the doctor said "stop baby food now" and my sister in law stopped cold turkey.

If you really want her to stop the bottle, just take it away and after a couple of days without milk, she'll ask for it in a sippy. If she is eating cheese and yogurt she'll be ok without the milk.

Good luck.