Category: Parent Talk
that's right, were aboutt to snatch the boddle away for good. and i was wondering if anyone had any tips for making this transition an easier one.
I know it seems early, but both of his bio parrents have really jacked up teath and his top two teath are already coming in with a gap so we need to get him off of the nipple as soon as possible. i thought about putting yucky juices that he doesn't like like proon or tomato so he will hoapfully stop taking the boddle and start putting the things he does like like milk and apple juice in the sippy cups but i'm not sure if that's the best thing to do.
he really depends on that boddle a little too much, so i know it's going to be tough.
Lol, apparentlyy, my mom heated nearly everything in my bottle. One day she gave it to me with something cold in it. She says, I took a drink, said yucky, and dropped it in the trash. *lol!*
Now, getting the passafire away from me, was a much harder feat for them! They ended up bribing me at age four! That leads into a longer story, smile!
Just do it. The child will get thirsty sometime.
lol. he loves cold things, so maybe i'll try warming it up, haha. luckilly, he wasn't a binky baby.
o and i read my post up there and i sounded a bit rood but just so you know i wasn't making fun of eather bio parrent's teath, just staiting a fact,because i know people are going to ask why so soon
mona, have you introduced the sippy to him already? how well is he using it? you have a few options. depending on how stubborn noah is, there is always the just throw all the bottles away method. he will eventually get thirsty and drink from the sippy. you can do things like try to give him the sippy 15 minutes before you'd usually give him a bottle of milk.
i've started with savannah last month on transition. I give her a sippy at times with her formula, instead of a bottle. this has worked well so far. so i'm hoping that completely taking the bottles out of the picture won't be too hard on her.
you can get sippys with the rubber type spouts, so that they are more like a bottle. these are what my best friend used. she went from bottle to bottle type sippy, then to normal sippy.
also, if you are concerned about his teeth, the juices are not good for his teeth. and sippy cups are also said to not be good for the teeth. but honestly what are you to do, give a one year old a normal cup and live in a lake of milk and juice? lol
there is a blind parenting mailing list group if you are interested. they are all very helpful parents and you might get more advice there if you are interested.
Personally, I'm not a fan of the parent deciding when it is right for the child to give up the botttle. One thing that my mom did right was to allow me to do it when I was ready. There is nothing wrong with a one, or even two, three, or four year old with a bottle. I don't know if it is just me, or that society is forcing babies to be grown up much faster than they used to. Come on? Six months old with a sippy cup? Bottle snatching at one? I'm so sorry, but that seems like adults are forcing children to grow waaaaay faster than they are even ready to. And people complain when ten year old girls want to act like they are going on thirty... Hmmmmm the double standards. Parents rush babies out of babyhood and speed up the independence even before they are psychologically ready to handle such changes so they will not have to deal with them for long, but when a child wants to be precotious, it is a problem. I don't understand. I'd want my child to be a child as long as possible because they have all of their lives to grow up, be adults, and worry. We are only children for a third of our lives. Yes, a third. Let our children be children, please!
I depended on a bottle until I was twelve. That's right, you heard me. I was twelve. that bottle was my security. I felt safe. I felt comforted. I felt relaxed. If my mother would have taken it from me abruptly, I would have totally lost it and have melted like crazy.
Think of something that makes you feel secure and safe. Do you still have security items? You may not but a lot of adults still do but keep such things a secret in fear of being judged by society or people thinking they are strange. I do not however, as I'm me and that is that. Screw conformity. I don't care about what society thinks. If I want security items, i'll have them, even if I'm twenty-four going on twenty-five. I have to do what is best for me, not what others feel is best for me. That is what my mom thought when she was allowing me to go on my time table. What was best for me superseeded what others in society thought. I'm sure my mother was judged fiercely for allowing me to do what I did, but I never knew about it because she did a good job at protecting and defending me. See how much I don't care? Anyhow, say you had something secure. One day, someone decided that it was time you gave it up. They did not care about how it made you feel. They did not take into account that the specific item made you feel safe. They just thought that you did not need it any longer and it was going to be snatched from you at their time of choosing because they said it was so. How would you feel? Probably dreadful, right? Well, babies, believe it or not, feel the same way. Babies, more than adults, need something to hold onto to comfort them. Why does it matter if he depends on the bottle "a little too much?" He is only one! He is a little baby still! Please, just let him be a baby while he still can. You are not doing anything wrong by doing this. I promise you with all my heart. i'd never steer you wrong. You are a wonderful person, and i'm willing to offer help and advice wherever I can.
Back then, my mom did not know I was on the Autistic spectrum, but she did know i was different than other children, so she let me do what was comfortable for me. The deal was that I'd have the bottles at home but not in public. In public, I had the cups like everyone else. And between ten and twelve, the use of the bottles got less and less. After the age of ten, I just wanted them when I went to bed.
on top of that, I was a thumbsucker until I graduated my senior year in high school. The extended use of the bottle and the many years of sucking my thumbs did not ruin my teeth, nor did it impair me psychologically. I think that when the parents make abrupt decisions that are not right or comfortable for the child all because the parents think it should be so is when the psychological problems start. Children have rights and feelings, too, and they should be respected. Yes, there are social norms, but compromises can be made that will work for all. God bless my momma. She was a wonderful example as to how something like that could work so smoothly. I'll surely be doing that for my children also.
It may help as well to know that it's not good to give the child a bottle while he or she is trying to fall asleep.
Well, Tom. It is no harm. I did it and so did millions of other babies and children, and they are still alive to tell about it. Bottles actually are a comfort to many many children, and i feel it is wrong for parents to deny that comfort if the child is not ready to let go. Things can be snatched from adults, too, and I know they would not like it. i took bottles to bed until twelve years of age, and I'm not dead yet, and neither did any ill health effects come from doing the bottle to bed thing for all those years. If the child has bad teeth, they are going to rot whether or not the bottle is taken to bed or drank from at all.
I used to go forever without brushing my teeth as a kid because i hated it. I'd lie to my mom and say that I did but I did not really. I went weeks, sometimes, and did not do it, and I ate lots of candy and stuff. I am proud to ssay that I have not one cavity. And, i drank the bottle to bed right along with that. so, it is all genetics. Yes, hygene helps, but it is not everything, and it is not the complete factor as to why teeth rot out. My teeth are beautiful and straight, and I'm so happy to say that I do not need braces.
I have a friend who takes care of her teeth, goes to the dentist, and is all proper about it, but her teeth are rotting out of her mouth. So, taking the bottle away makes no difference. if the child's teeth are destined to rot or have trouble, then they will. I was fortunate.
bottle drinking, thumb sucking, and sippy cups have very little to do with the way our teeth come in. it's all genetics. sorry. one of my best friends is a dentist and he told me this.
putting juice or milk in a bottle and using this to soothe themselves to sleep p can tend to make our darling little ones get baby bottle mouth. this is where all the baby teeth in the front get huge cavities in them.
however, my friend says that the chemical makeup of the saliva has as much to do with the cavities as does anything else. people with a lot of cavities tend to have very acidic spit. so reina, thank your environment and your genes. like you I have great teeth and do nothing about them but avoid the dentist.
frankly as a blind parent, I hated the sippy cup. it was so much easier for them to race through the house drippping the juice everywhere. same with juice boxes. gross!!!! my kids learned to love white grape juice and water. other wishe i would lose my mind.
Snatch the sippy. He's a man, so should be chasing girls at 3, wanting a car at 10, and by 15 he'll ride a harley. Yep, just do it now!
JK. Smile.
I do agree teeth are genetic related, so take care of them, or you'll need a bottle at 40, then what?
If the sippy is easy for you, do as suggested trying the ones with the soft top first, then change to the regular ones. I personally think that social things need to be done for the social mental health of the child. If he or she is sucking a bottle at say 5, needs to go to school, it can be tough the teasing. Yes it's conforming, but it's simpler.
if you want to get your child off the bottle, encourage him and praise him for using the cup. my son weaned himself. i kid you not. for two weeks before the day i picked to take him off it completely, which was his 18 month birthday, i kept giving him the cup then i'd give him the bottle and say soon you won't need the bottle. big boys don't need them. on the day in question i handed him the bottle and he said no more bottle. i'm big now. i was like "thank god." I personally think getting them off the bottle sometime between one and two is fine but that's my personal belief. before that, they still have issues about sucking and can't verbalize to say what they need. am i making sense?
Conforming is simpler, but it also shows the child that it is okay to be a leader and not a follower. i want to teach my children to be leaders, not followers. I dont want them trying to fit in all because they want to be cool. I'll probably be saying the "if so and so wanted you to jump from a bridge, would you do it?" line quite a bit. Individuality is very important. Some of our greatest and smartest elitests were individuals who refused to conform, and they were surely teased mercialessly for it also, but they came out great!
My mom raised me that way, and I intend on raising my child that way also. I don't want my child to be a spineless jellyfish and have no identity all because it is the easy way out and he must forsake his individual identity for the sake of fitting in. If the parent provides a lot of support to the child, empowers the child to be an individual, focuses on the special attributes of the child, gives them the skills to cope with and deal with teasing, and teaches the child to stand up for himself, things will be fine. If you do things to show the child that he counts, instill confidence in him, and help him to grow to his full potential, it will work. I'm living proof. By golly, i've been teased mercilessly; however, i've always been the trend setter. I couldn't really care less of what others thought of me. i thank my parents for making me who I am today, a confident, free thinking, free spirited, outside the box, individual. I want my children to be the same way.
Wow! just looked over my post and saww a mistake. I meant to say that always conforming is teaching a child to be a follower and not a leader.
Also, Turicane, sadly parents take the bottle away at as early as six months because the baby can't fight back and virbalize, holding them responsible for the hurt at taking away the ssecurity they so badly need. The need to suck is very natural. If this is stopped prematurely, psychological problems could surface later or even immediately. I would not be surprised if there are more thumbsuckers as adults because their need to suck was not met as infants.
I don't believe in taking the boddle away completely before a year, but he's been taking the sippy off and on thrw out the day since he was about 9 months. the only problem i have is right before bed time and nap time. i have almost every brand of sippy cup out there, from cheep to down right expencive, the type with hard tops, the kind with soft tops, the sippy cup nipples and the transition nipples, no matter which kind they are, he just won't take one before bedtime or a nap.
the information was verry informitive on here, thanks guys.
and I don't think I will be letting him go about with a boddle in his mouth till he's twelve: regardlis. that's past the border of insane!
Well, I think i'm a pretty well adjusted adult, and i know for a fact that i'm not the only child who had a bottle past toddlerhood. I know of others who have been reared similarly, and they have, too, turned out fine. Just because a person does things differently does not constitute them as suffering from a form of insanity.
The definition of insanity is open to interpretation. The guidelines that my mother used, and that i use for a person does things are these:
So long as the act/interest/like is not illegal, unscriptural, immoral, and unethical, then it is okay to do or engage in.
Besides being on the Autistic spectrum, which is nothing that my mom or I could help, I'm pretty psychologically stable, if i might say so myself, and I've been through sooooooooooo much that I'd rather not disclose. There are many who have been where I was and have never made it through and have come out psychologically ruined without hope, and I'll just leave it at that.
OH, by the way, some trivia that I might share is that up until around twenty five years ago or so, and especially during the sixties and seventies, Autism was thought to have been the result of insane or bad parenting. Part of the treatment during that time period was to put the Autistic children in foster care to se if they'd improve, as they were taken from their parents' element. When this treatment did not work, the theory that being on the Autistic spectrum was the result of parenting from insanity was then debunked. I thought I might share that with you.
Following the crowd is not always bad, what if your kid wanted to be a leader and jump of that bridge but all his friend told him it was not cool, would you still encourage him to?
What if his friends told him to stop drinking, or to do well at school, or to stop lying, or cheating, would you still tell him, "no way dude, cheat as much as you can, because it proofs you are a leader and you areindependent".
In most cases society has adapted certain ways because they turnout to be the best and fitting in isn't always bad. This is, of course, not always true and group norms can change due to undue pressure or one simply ends up with "the wrong" group.
I think it is more important for parents to try and steer their kids towards groups of like minded kids and away from the problematic ones and teach them to use some brain when necessary, rather than just preach indepdendence for independence sake.
And, bottle at 12, I don't see that being a very socially accepted behavior, I would always try to get my kid to fit in, at least with obvious things such as these. I can't imagine one that sits around in school sucking on a pacifier or bottle to make many friends and the risk of being bullied or severely teased sounds pretty drastic to me, putting the child through mental anguish and hurt, probably much more than if I stepped in and tried to change the aspect of the child's behavior that made him or her stand out so much.
wow! that was way over the top. Lying, cheating, and the like would not classify as being moral, virtuous, Scriptural, or ethical, and in some cases, even legal. i think that you know very well what i meant in that I'd not teach my child to always conform, but it is okay to play the devil's advocate from time to time. Sure, following the crowd isn't always bad. We all know that much, but conforming because it is easier and always doing what society wants you to do does not always have to be. I do plenty of things against what society thinks is right, and that is because i'm an individual who thinks out of the box. There are plenty of upright and virtuous people who do not always do things according to the norms.
And I did not have the bottle in school. If you recall my very first post to this thread, my mom and i made a compromise that it would not be taken in public places and that I'd have the cups instead. I also did not have the luxury of a sippy because they were not around then, at least decent ones, that is. A sippy cup in my day was a cup with a lid that had a spout that was utterly useless. If you turned it upside down, the liquid would just dump out. There were no valves to stop the liquid from coming. I remember using them for a very, very short time, but i mostly had the regular cups instead like everyone else. By then, I had good dexterity, as I was three years of age when I started learning to use the cup. So my hands were not as clumsy as a one year old baby.
You are a good debater, I'll give you that. I enjoy having discussions with you. I'm always up for a good challenge. :)
"my mom and i made a compromise that it would not be taken in public places" meaning the bottle. Why was this? But we are speaking of a child that has not developed skills to reason out social issues, so I say again if the cup seems good, then do as suggested, praise him for using the cup.
There is no harm in this. If at nap time he won't take the cup give him the bottle then for a while longer, but set the boundrries for when he's awake, and soon the bottle will be gone. Now after he or she becomes the age to start reasoning about social issues and wants to suck a bottle, then that will be a different question. Smile.
Peace.
Well, when I was a baby, my mom did not make such choices for me. What she did do is observe how I reacted to things. If I reacted in such a way that I was very upset, she'd not pursue it. i was also a persistent baby and would freak out until I got the comfort i needed. If something was different and I was not in favor of it, i'd let you know about it. i hated change, and unless it was okay with me to make the changes, it was not happening. Thank God for years of therapy because I now can accept change slightly better.
My mom told me about my stubbornness. I could scream for hours and hours on end nonstop. i was also the type that would not give in no matter what. Taking the bottle away completely and only giving me the sippy would not have worked for me because I'd refuse it no matter what. Sometimes, I was thought to be unmanageable. I bet I annoyed the hell out of my mom. Oy! It makes since now because later in my life, i found out i was on the spectrum. We did not know that then, but mother's intuition told my mom that i was different than other children, thus things had to be done differently. She did not know what was really wrong. She could not put her finger on it, but she did know that it would not be a good idea to take things from me that made me feel secure because it is a norm set by society.
She did tell me that she was criticized heavily for the decisions that she made for me when i was growing up. People told her that she needed to set limits and just do it, even if i hated it. I was a baby and it would not matter anyway. She was told i'd give in eventually and just do what was set for me. She was told that she needed to take charge because I was a spoiled baby and trying to run her life, but she knew in her heart what was best. But, my mom did not even consider taking the bottle from me at Noah's age, though, if she tried, i could have held her accountable because i was speaking well by that time that I could tell her no. i started talking and walking by ten months. By one, I was speaking in short and complete sentences. Every child is unique and different in their own special way. It is beautiful.
She tried to wean me when i was three, but I was not having it. I can still remember that day. Some of the footage is even on tape, too. It is so interesting actually! So, because i still had to be somewhat normal, and i was attending nursery school, we made a deal. I could have the bottle at friend's houses, my house, and at my relatives. i just could not have it in public.
your mom was wise. you understood the limmits and stayed within them. i don't see the big deal.
you are absolutely right. There is no big deal. None at all. If i had been too mentally challenged to understand what was going on, or had the mind of Noah's age at an older age, I'm sure that my mom would not have taken the bottle then. If i were mentally challenged, she definitely would have handled things differently i'm sure. But because i was able to comprehend things, we compromised, which can be done with the Autistic, depending on the circumstances. This is the message I was trying to get across.
I was one of those babies who were prone to being abused because I screamed a lot, was severely stubborn, and would freak out and not give in. I was not the kind to just go along with things because I was a baby and that was set for me. oh, no. My mom could tell you that if you ever have the pleasure of meeting her. I was far from easy going. i could scream for seven to eight hours straight. Not cry but scream. These are the types of babies you hear about on the news being shaken and beaten because they are abused. It takes a special parent to deal with these babies. Thank God my mother was my mom and not someone else. Thank God she knew how to deal with me, too. I'm ever so thankful and blessed. I do agree with you. My mom was indeed a wise woman.
I wasn't making your boddle thing a big deal, just staiting that noah would not be doing that, your the one who made it a big deal by asuming my topick on people givving me advice about parrenting when they had no kids was aimed at you, well it wasn't. it was aimed at people in jeneral, and you gave me some pritty good aspects too look at aside from the boddle thing so i hope you wern't afended.
please don't think every thing people say is aimed at you, we're just all trying to make a better world for our kiddos.