Teaching Baby How to Use a Straw
After six months of age, it’s great to start introducing your baby to sips of water, formula, or breastmilk from a cup. This is purely to provide experience and teach the skill, not for intake (of course, there are some exceptions). Many families have been asking about my recommendations on straw cups and teaching this skill to their baby as they venture into the world of solids and mealtimes in the high chair.
I LOVE having babies start practicing with a straw by 7-8 months; generally the skill can be mastered by 9 months of age. I’ve also had some younger babies master it much earlier too!
Olababy Straw Cup
What I love about this cup is it’s size and the fact that if modified slightly, you can help squeeze liquid up into the straw to help baby learn the skill. While the cup is more expensive (around $15 typically), it also has great functionality that can be used throughout the toddler years. If you take the straw out and leave the lid on, it helps teach open cup drinking without the big mess. Then when your little one has mastered that, you just use it as an open cup. That well-designed base is great for keeping it upright, even when they’re not exactly paying attention!
Just a note: I don’t ever recommend the Honey Bear cup. This is for two reasons - it is too tall to be used with a little one sitting in a high chair and therefore doesn’t support independent use AND so many people use it incorrectly with the straw pulled WAY too far out, therefore not teaching the right skills much of the time.
For my tips on how to teach your baby HOW to use the straw, check out my video below:
Now, just to be clear, the Olababy Straw Cup isn’t necessarily the cup you’ll need to keep using once baby masters straw drinking. At that point, you can move to other straw cups such as the Munchkin, Dr. Brown’s, etc. Just make sure that you try to drink from the cup before assuming your baby can use it; some of the cups with the spill-proof valves are really hard to suck from!
Straw drinking is a great skill to support the development of your baby’s mouth and swallowing skills. Hopefully these tips will get you off to a great start!
