sippy cups

Most everyone knows how I feel about the evils of using a sippy cup past a year old. This is an article one of the girls from work found. No, I didn't write it but I completely agree with it!


In response to the “sippy cup dilemma”…..
As a licensed practicing Speech Language Pathologist, I have observed the damaging impact on oral-motor musculature, swallowing patterns, dentition, and speech/articulation development as a result of chronic sippy cup use. This is especially true with the "new" totally spill proof sippy cups that have a stopper and the only way to drink is to suck. Maintaining a sucking pattern while drinking interferes with the development of adult swallow patterns and directly impacts on oral-motor muscle development, speech, and articulation development. Sippy cups were/are meant to TRANSITION a child from bottle to regular cup. A child is transitioned from a bottle at a certain age to encourage proper oral-motor musculature development and development of an adult swallow pattern. In my opinion, chronic use of a pacifier, bottle, and/or sippy cup during this time FREQUENTLY results in oral-motor and/or speech disorders, malocclusion, and "tongue thrust" swallowing patterns. I also agree that chronic use of a sippy cup may be one of several contributing factors for a particular child with speech/articulation delays. Once a child has been identified as having oral-motor/speech/articulation deficits, removing pacifiers, sippy cups, and/or thumbs will at least contribute to increased rate of progress in therapy. Many parents continue chronic use of sippy cups until age 3 to 4 (or later). It is not the sippy cup that is the problem, but in how it is used, and how parents are not informed as to the dangers and risks of not using it properly: as a transitioning tool rather than as a "pacifier for the carpet or car".


Preach it, Sister.