Dental caries risk
Many babies like to drink bedtime milk with bottles and even sleep with pacifiers. The deciduous teeth are always soaked in milk, which greatly increases the risk of dental caries.
Risk of obesity
The baby has been holding the bottle, which is easy to drink more milk unconsciously, thus causing obesity.
Affect the development of language ability
Holding the bottle for a long time, oral muscles cannot be exercised, which is not conducive to the baby’s learning to speak and hinders the development of the baby’s language ability. Let the child learn to use the cup, in addition to getting rid of the bottle as soon as possible, it is also conducive to exercising the baby’s hand-eye coordination ability, improving fine exercise ability and promoting brain development.
How old is the baby to use the cup?
At the age of 6 months, the baby can begin to try to use the cup.
The baby’s fine movements, muscle strength and hand-eye coordination ability are not yet fully developed, and the process of learning to use cups may be quite long. Mothers should have enough patience and give them sufficient transition time.
The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that babies should be skilled in drinking water from cups by the latest age of 2.
Which cups are suitable for babies?
Babies usually go through three stages in using cups: duckbill cup-straw cup-open cup.
If your baby is used to using bottles, you can introduce straw cups at the beginning. Choose a cup that is light in weight, suitable for grasping and small in size.
If the straw cup adapts well, then the baby can try to use the duckbill cup. This kind of cup needs to tilt the bottle body to drink water, which is a good transition for the baby to use the open cup.
When the baby can skillfully use the duckbill cup, the ordinary open cup can be introduced.
There are also some babies who will jump over this process, skipping straw cups and duckbill cups, and directly using open cups. This shows that the baby’s adaptability to open cups is better, and parents just need to pay attention not to let the child choke.