Q&A: toddler eating and drinking

Kat writes:

"My babies are 13 1/2 months now, and both of them act as if I am choking the heck out of them when I try to feed "solid" solid foods. Things they can/will eat: 1) cheerios, tofu hot dogs cut into small pieces, macaroni and cheese, shredded cheese.  Anything else I offer, small cut up pieces of chicken, green beans, kidney beans, baked beans, black beans, julliened(sp?) cooked carrots, any other foods I think might be "soft" enough, like a bite of lasagna, for example, is promptly spit out of their mouths or choked on.  I am at my wits end, imagining that I will still be spooning baby food jars of green beans and rice at 2 years old.

Also, we are having a heck of a time encouraging the sippy cup.  They seem to rather not drink anything than to drink milk from the sippy (although strangely enough they will guzzle water from the sippy).  Mini I can understand as she's only for the boob, but Jr. only takes a bottle, I thought he'd be easy.  People are making faces at me for continuing to offer the bottle."

 

I'm going to start at the end of this question.

<rant>

I hate, no make that despise, the crazy fervor in this country to get kids off the bottle at exactly the 12-month mark. If you can keep a kid on the breast past 12 months (and let's remember that the WHO recommends nursing until at least 2 years, so no one ought to be telling anyone to wean at 12 months if she doesn't want to) then you can keep a kid on the bottle past 12 months. But we seem to have this bizarre preoccupation with taking away anything that resembles comfort for our babies to encourage them to be independent. Because God forbid a toddler might actually need comfort, and all the ills of the world are clearly caused by having used a bottle too long.

<insert eyeroll></rant>

But now to circle back around to the front of the question.

I'm not sure about the choking, honestly. Is it that they're engaging in a power play or just don't like to eat those foods and are pretending to gag (which sounds dead on for that age), or are they actually physically choking on them? If you're going in to the pediatrician at 15 months, just mention it and see what s/he says. If the ped thinks there's anything going on, s/he'll give you a referral to a physical therapist who will evaluate them.

Best case scenario: They get evaluated and it's nothing, and you can stop worrying.

Worst case scenario: They get evaluated, and it's something that can be dealt with easily with regular therapy, and you can stop worrying.

Linda (also a mom of twins--hmmm....) asked me a sippy-cup-related question recently, too, so I'll add hers to yours:

"I hate sippy cups.  I posted on my blog forever ago about it and I still haven't figure them out.  My kids will only drink from the soft tipped ones.  I can't get them to drink from the hard tipped ones at all.  The problem is that they chew on the soft tipped ones and then break the valve and render them useless.  I think you recommended the straw cups.  Do you stand by that?  And when can they start (reliably and relatively neatly) drinking from a topless cup?"

I don't really get the sippy as this new "skill" or "milestone" people act like they're teaching. It's not something that really builds to anything, since most of us don't do any kind of motion like drinking from a sippy as adults. The real point of the sippy is that it doesn't spill when it's tipped over, not that it's something kids need to learn to use.

OTOH, learning to suck things from a straw is a useful skill. Straws are fun, and you have the chance to use one every time you drink anything at a restaurant. You use the same motion when you drink from a sports bottle. If you don't want to mess up your lipstick, you have to use a straw. And--here's the kicker--it's an easier, more natural muscle motion for kids to learn. El Chico was a sippy conscientious objecter when he was a toddler, but when someone suggested a straw cup I tried it and he got it immediately. We've used the Playtex Straw Cup and also the Rubbermaid straw cup and found both to be delightful.

We have a couple of friends who were diagnosed with low muscle tone (hypotonia) in the mouth muscles, and one of the things they're supposed to do is drink out of straws every day. So there's that.

Kat, I don't think it's at all odd that they won't drink milk from anything that they haven't been using all along (the breast for your daughter and the bottle for your son). Milk is the basic, bedrock comfort, and they don't want anything changed about it. El Chico would never take breastmilk from a straw cup (only me or the bottle), but would take ice cold cow's milk from the straw cup. I've heard similar things from lots of other moms--that their child would take breastmilk or formula only from boob or bottle, but would take other liquids from the straw/sippy.

So I'd say just to forget about getting rid of the bottle (unless it's actually bugging you) because undoubtedly you've got some bigger fish to fry at this point, and don't expect them to take milk from the straw/sippy. Use it for other liquids, instead. That's my famous Lower Your Expectations method of parenting, BTW.

I bet people are actually making faces at you because they're jealous that you look so good despite having twin toddlers, not because of the bottle.:)

Linda, I thought I could say that 3 was when they could reliably and neatly drink from a topless cup, until we hit 3 1/2.

Have you read any of the Ames and Ilg series of books on child development?  They were recommended by the amazing Dawn, and they are dead on. They all have funny titles like Your Two-Year-Old: Terrible or Tender and Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy, and some of the things are horribly outdated (assumptions that the mother is at home all day with the child, and that kids aren't in school ever until age 5) because they were written in the 70s, but they are scarily accurate. You think your child is some sort of freak and that you're raising a monster, and then you read the book and every odd thing your child is doing is typical behavior for that age and will go away in six months. Highly comforting.

Anyway, Ames and Ilg say that kids alternate between equilibrium (emotionally and physically confident and sure) and disequilibrium (in emotional upheaval and physically clumsy) for years. On the year seems to be equilibrium and on the half year seems to be disequilibrium. So at 3 El Chico and his friends could walk around with open containers and not spill any. But then a few months later they'd spill every freaking time I'd give them a cup. We're starting to go back to mastery, though.

So you probably want to stick with the white grape juice for a few more years. But try the straw cups now, and let them use topless cups outside next summer so they can practice.

Comments

[Heather]

I totally second the reccomendation for straw cups. I have an 11-month old who is breastfed, and never would take a bottle. I've tried the Avent sippy cups, Nubys, etc., but the only thing he will drink liquid out of is a straw cup. Rubbermaid even makes straw cups with little animal shapes if you want to make it more fun.

For what its worth, I don't actually see why we reccomend taking away the bottle, but it is o-kay to carry around a sippy cup all day. A traditional sippy cup, carried around all day, is just as likely to promote tooth decay as a bottle. Also, just as Moxie pointed out, they aren't really transitioning our babies to any skill they will need to master.

[Linda]

I always feel kinda bad for my friends who are all apologetic for giving their kids bottles. It's no skin off my teeth. I think the main reason for make 12 months the no-bottle cutoff is so they don't get into the totally non-flexible 2 year age where they won't change their habits at all. Plus, bottles can leak and my couch is already full of stains.

[Linda]

Okay, I just realized the stain comment sounds kinda dirty. That's not how I meant it. Really.

[Menita]

"we seem to have this bizarre preoccupation with taking away anything that resembles comfort for our babies to encourage them to be independent."
Oh how I love that you wrote that. These are BABIES, for heaven's sake. If they need comfort, why on earth not give it to them? I don't mean coddle or spoil them, but why not smooth things over a little until they're ready?
When Polly was tiny we got sixty-seven kinds of grief from the people around us for always comforting her when she cried. And you know what? The kid is not clingy at all today - she just knows that she can call for us if she needs us - otherwise she does her own thing.

[Andrea]

Okay, thank you all! I feel so much better now regarding 15 month old son, who refuses to use a sippy cup and doesn't want to ditch the bottle (which he wouldn't take until he was 8 months old and at daycare...). He does occasionally take a hit through a straw, so I'll try steering him that way. I am so tired of people telling me I have to make him quit the bottle now or he'll be scarred for life. I suspect that like when we were trying to get him to take the bottle, he'll do it in his own time. He also took months and months to agree to eat solid food, and now he eats absolutely everything just fine.

Incidentally, my 3 1/2 yr old can use an open cup quite well, but we still use sippys (sometimes) and straw cups (mostly) because she has to have closed containers at daycare and I have plenty of spills around the house already.

[Margaret]

Go look at this site: http://www.borstvoeding.com/kleintjes/rapley_guidelines.html

It summarizes the research of Gill Rapley, a British midwife who did a study on baby-led feeding of solid foods. Most of this is talking about babies in the 6-12 month range, but I think it provides an interesting perspective for older babies too. I think what it comes down to is that babies have a lot more innate skill and knowledge about what they can & should eat than they are usually given credit for.

There is also a new book out called _My Child Won't Eat!_ by Carlos Gonzalez, a pediatrician. He basically says that it's your job to offer a variety of nutritious foods and your children's job to eat what they need.

Toddlers can definitely be maddening, the way they seem to live on air sometimes! My kids have enjoyed foods that they can dip into something. It's messy, but if it encourages them to eat, well . . . some days that's a good trade-off. :-)

[Jessica]

My daughter also was strongly resistant to a cup at first, particularly the ones with hard spouts and both the day care she attended at the time and her old pediatrician were adamant about giving up a bottle at 12 months. I felt a lot of pressure to get her off the bottle from them, even though I personally wasn’t that upset about it.

While I absolutely agree with Moxie that straw cups make the most sense as a transitional cup, they weren't the best option for my daughter for two reasons. 1) She is a cup biter, which Linda mentioned her girls are as well. By this I mean that she chews at the top of every sippy cup and straw cup we have if they are hard plastic, quickly rendering them both useless and also disgusting, and (2) the straw was initially too much of a distraction and reason to play stirring/remove the top of the cup/spill all over the place.

Someone recommended the NUBY sippy cup to me http://www.netkidswear.com/12oznunogrcu.html
and it was a lifesaver at first. It has a soft plastic spout made out of silicon like a bottle nipple and no valve. She didn't really ever bite on it, and it doesn't spill. They do wear out after about 4-5 months in the dishwasher (the holes in the top start to get bigger and then they will leak) but they are really cheap and I didn't mind replacing them. The link is to an online retailer, but they are sold in k-marts, wal-marts and CVS stores. In CVS they are sold as the store brand cup and often come in a two-pack. In the other stores, they are often sold individually and are usually on a shelf in a box underneath the rack of hanging packaged sippy cups. They are about $2 per cup, sometimes less. They also now come in a straw-top option http://www.babybungalow.com/nuncanospcoc.html
which we never tried, but my 88-year old grandmother who has no use of one arm uses them and likes them.

Once she was used to the NUBY cup (and it took a while for her to be willing to drink any type of milk out of one, so I started with water mized with the tiniestsplash of either white grape or apple juice) I was able to move to the also ultra cheap disposable sippy cups http://www.drugstore.com/qxp83795_334918_sespider/the_first_years/take_and_toss_spill_proof_10_oz_cups_from_9_months.htm
which are hard plastic but have no valve. She bites the tops of these and they get disgusting fairly quickly, but they are inexpensive to replace and she still uses them now (at age 2 years, 9 months) for travel and sometimes comfort at home.

This fall I attempted to get rid of the sippy up entirely. At preschool they give them plastic dixie cups of water with the requirement that they only drink while seated, and she can handle those great. At home, it's been more of a mixed bag. Like Moxie, I find that her coordination is not yet consistent. Also, she still likes her "baby cups" for comfort, and quite frankly they are much easier for me when we are either in the car or out on the go in the stroller. So right now, at home we use a mix of plastic cups without straw, plastic cups with a cheap disposable straw, and the disposable sippy cups. We also have a very strict rule about only drinking in the house while seated at the kitchen or dining room tables. I figure if she is capable of drinking out of both a straw and a regular cup unassisted that is what matters the most, and that I can slowly wean her off the "baby cups" as her coordination grows.

[Linda]

Thanks, all.

Jessica: I find it hilarious that ALL the cups you recommended are the ones I have in my house! I clicked on the first link knowing that those are the ones I use and that I'm getting sick of because E and L are CONSTANTLY chewing through them. Then I clicked on the second link and was surprised to find my back-up cups. When I clicked on the 3rd link I thought, "No way can these be the ones I bought a couple weeks ago and just tried yesterday and L spilled all over herself twice." And they were!

[Jody]

Not for nothing, but we used bottles until after the kids' second birthday. Wilder and Elba were still nursing, so why wouldn't Gemma (and Elba) get bottles? We used sippy cups for water, but formula/EBM came in bottles.

Then, at that supposed oppositional age of 26 or 27 months (how soon we forget....), we had a bottle-packing party and gave all the bottles to a friend with a new baby. The friend was returning to work, so the children got a long song and dance about how the baby needed the bottles for EBM. They were old enough to understand the story, close enough to the friend to appreciate being needed, and baby-crazy enough to get the competing needs thing. Plus, the baby wasn't in the house, so it wasn't a competition thing.

I couldn't get rid of bottles for as long as the bottles, any bottles, were in the house. The kids were smart, and they would HOLD OUT.

They kept asking for bottles for about a month after the big gifting (they got to put all the bottles in the box, and then decorate the box after taping it closed) but we'd just remind them, no more bottles, and then they'd take the sippy.

Changing to sippy cups just wasn't one of those things I cared about. Most sippy cups leak.

Oh, our friends with the baby? Gave the box of bottles back to my husband via the workplace, and we donated them to a group working with new mothers.

And I didn't stop nursing until the rather surprising (to me) age of 3.5, but that's a story for another set of posts, right?

[KatS]

Thanks for the responses, everyone! Just FYI, we will get another feeding evaluation soon (we had one at about 8 weeks old, then at 7 months old).