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Honestly, I'd just stop making it an option for you to hold it. If he's thirsty, he will figure it out. My son started feeding himself with a spoon really early and I remember my friend (who had a child a similar age) asking how we got him to do it. We said that we just stopped offering to do it and he figured it out pretty fast.

If you had the option of someone feeding you as opposed to feeding yourself and knew they would do it.... would you feel very motivated to do it yourself?

Neither of our kids have been into holding their own bottles, much to the chagrin of our daycare teachers and now our nanny. Every kid is different. They had no problems feeding themselves finger foods when it was time, and eventually we were off bottles completely. But they didnt hold their own bottles ever, right up until we stopped using them.

DS1 never held a bottle and frankly never understood sippy cups until he was learning open cup closer to 2. (Same rage issues). He did get a straw cup (we taught him using the take and toss straw cups bc you can squeeze liquid up them) and he used the ones with a handle for a long time. But he couldn't use any straw cup with hard resistance (so the leakproof ones didn't work for us). He used Tommee Tippee straw cups on the go and Zoomi cups at home.

DS2 won't hold his bottles either - he's 8 months.

We dropped bottles at a year but my kiddos STTN. We just left straw cups of water out everywhere and gave straw cups of formula or milk at mealtimes. We offered yogurt for snack once a day too. Our ped said 8-12oz of milk a day is actually fine after 1 year.

DS1 was also slow on self feeding - we put lots of table food but hand/spoon fed him for a long time - closer to 16-18 months.

Both my boys had reflux.

But DS1 is 28 months and he's just fine at open cup, utensils, and self-feeding so don't worry!

@Jackiedavis87: With both of my girls, we moved towards dropping bottles after they were 1. Both of my kids have also loved water out of straw cups, but not milk (milk alternative in our case), so essentially, they just phase out milks entirely. Also, for both of our girls, we kept a bedtime bottle for a loooong time after dropping all the daytime bottles. I think with my oldest we finally stopped the bedtime bottle at 20 months. My youngest is 17 months and still gets the bedtime bottle--she *just* started holding it and drinking it while we read her a story.

@Jackiedavis87: The Take n Toss ones and the Tommee Tippee should be at Walmart. Zoomi is on Amazon.

My boys have done really well on rice porridges. Basically, we boil cooked rice with a lot of water or broth and finely minced veggies, whisk in an egg at the end of cooking for protein and to thicken it up, and feed. Sometimes we add some cheese, sometimes a drizzle of sesame oil, and we can swap out the veggies with whatever we have. Eventually we could make them thicker and chunkier and add soft minced tofue, meat or shrimp. I liked it because they always got a balanced meal between that and some quartered blueberries or bits of banana.

@Jackiedavis87: Also, don't get too frustrated. DS1 had much more severe reflux than DS2 and their interest in food is night and day. If food has always been a source of heartburn and pain for you, then its totally understandable that its not a source of comfort or something to get all that excited about. So working on finding foods he really likes is a good gateway. DS1 has always loved plain white sticky rice, watermelon, banana, yogurt melts, and yogurt. So we fed that a lot to him in and moved to bigger pieces. Sometimes we would hand feed him a few bites and then put the rest on his tray. If its something tacky or sticky like mashed banana or yogurt or sticky grains of rice, it can just stick to his hands and he can get it to his mouth.