Hellobee Boards

I voted 12-15 months. LO just moved up to the toddler room last week at 16 months. In the toddler room they only use open cups so I wanted to make it easier on her by working on it at home. Now she can pretty much pick up my cup and drink from it herself.

But since we started water at 7 months she has always preferred drinking from our glass.

We pretty much use the Avent Training Cup at home now exclusively along with letting her drink from our cups.
http://amzn.com/B006GYLL8Y

My LO vastly prefers open cups and will drink a lot more from a open cup!

I'm fairly positive you have nothing to worry about

J isn't 100% on real cups - but he is constantly using ours! We always assist though so he understands how it works but I don't entrust him with it completely on his own. So he uses a pretty equal balance of straw/sippy cups and open cups.

We've been working on her with open cups since she was about 13 months.

We use this one. The first time she used it she just tipped it back all over herself but now she can use it correctly. At 16 months we just started with a small glass (it's actually a jar for artichokes that I'm recycling) and she will hold it but I usually have to help because she is not used to the weight.
http://www.amazon.com/DOIDY-Doidy-Cup-Blue-color/dp/B0012AUR32/ref=sr_1_10?s=baby-products&ie=UTF8&qid=1378756253&sr=1-10&keywords=training+cup

i don't think you'll have too much problem teaching your LO it may take a few weeks, but i think he'll get the hang of it!

we were kind of 'forced' to start using open cups early, around 9 months, because he JUST COULDNT figure out sippys and straw cups, and was refusing the bottle. we always held it for him and now at 15 months he can be trusted to do it himself, with supervision.

my friend is a speech pathologist and she told me that it is sippy cups that can affect speech development and front teeth placement etc -- straw cups are fine, according to her.

good luck!!

@tysonja: All our speech therapists said the same thing. It's sippy cups that could pose a problem. ?They said straw cups are actually quite good for developing oral muscle strength.

I agree with what some of the others said, sippy cups are different from straw cups and straw cups don't seem to be an issue.

That being said-- to transition to an open cup I choose a small cup, a shot glass actually works pretty well but anything that fits comfortably in two hands is good. I exaggerate how I drink in front of them. Model using two hands since in the beginning they will need to. I will take some time each afternoon and sit there with them and pour about a 1/4 inch in the glass and hand it to them. They drink it and give it back and it becomes a fun little game. It takes a long time before I just give them an open cup on their tray while they are eating because they just don't pay attention. I typically give them water before and after eating and have it available if they want it while they are eating OR give them a straw cup.

We have the reflo cup. You still have to make sure he doesn't dump it all out but at least it dumps out more slowly.

and sometimes he pulls out the insert...

@irene: good job during dinner tonight!!

i guess there is pro's and cons with starting earlier or when they were older! earlier -- it takes forever to learn, but they don't really know any better.... and older -- should technically be faster for them to learn, but they've got tricks up their sleeves!

hope it continues to get smoother as the days go by!

E can drink from an open cup but she gets more from the zoli (at 15 months). I think by 20 months we'll try to use the cup more.

DS could drink from a cup but wasn't full switched until 2! Maybe that's why he doesn't speak that clearly

We did it early, right at 1 year, mostly because DS never figured out the sippy and I didn't want to buy a million different ones before finding the right one. He had it down pretty well by 14 months. Of course, he did have accidents and spills, but it wasn't a catastrophe. I would just start introducing it slowly, maybe one meal a day and make it fun! Get him a color or design he would like and make a big deal about how he's drinking like a big boy/mama/papa. Also, only put like an inch of liquid in it at a time so that if is spilled everywhere, it's not too much to clean up or wasted.

@mrsjazz: I know this is an older thread, but you had good success with the Doidy cup?

@mrsjazz: awesome! I was planning to order one but it's good to hear you liked it. I trust hellobee people more than reviews on Amazon. Haha!

Switching to open cups goes in my file of "Things I Don't Want to Deal With." I gues I'll start around 2, but I'm dreading the mess. They do take drinks out of our open cups and we've let them do that since they were probably 15 months or so.