Today’s Hint: Drink From Your Child’s Straw Sippy Cup

One evening about three months ago, as my friend was washing the straw sippy cup his 1-year-old daughter had used that day, he noticed that the straw wasn’t fully secured and hadn’t been all day.

“I thought to myself, ‘I wonder if that affects suction,’” he says. So, he took a sip from the straw and sure enough, no liquid came through.

Turns out, his daughter had been drinking nothing from the cup all day, since the straw hadn’t been fully hooked up. “I thought she was drinking happily, but it turned out she wasn’t getting a drop. It was an a-ha moment,” says my friend, who remembers thinking “Oh, this is why she’s been crabby all day!”

So since then, my friend and his wife have implemented a strategy for making sure their little one’s straw sippy is properly functioning, a tip that is today’s hint.

The trick: Drink from your child’s sippy cup every so often. My friends, the same ones who cleverly created DIY nursery wall letters and a crib pacifier bar,  say they regularly sip from their daughter’s cup “just to be sure it’s working,” taking sips from the sippy three or four times a day.

They say they find the cup isn’t working – i.e. no liquid is coming through — probably once every two days, whether because the straw came loose or wasn’t hooked on properly. When that happens, they just re-secure the straw.

So why don’t they just get a new sippy cup style that doesn’t malfunction as easily? My friend says they don’t want to retire the Munchkin style they use, since it’s the only cup style they’ve found that doesn’t seem to leak.

I also can testify that the no-liquid-coming-through problem happens with many styles of sippy cups. As I’ve mentioned before, my daughter has a hodgepodge collection of sippy cups, and ever since I starting using my friends’ take-a-sip trick, I’ve realized that there are occasions when my daughter is, in fact, drinking nothing because the cup parts aren’t properly hooked up.

To be sure, you may not need to take a sip to confirm something is wrong if you’re using a clear cup, and you can see that the liquid isn’t disappearing despite your little one’s sips.

In addition, there can be downsides to the take-a-sip approach. As my friend notes, they’re more likely to catch their daughter’s bugs. But he figures, they would catch most of her bugs anyway.

What are your tricks for making sure a sippy is actually working? What are your favorite sippy cup styles? Share your thoughts below, and be sure to enter to win six sippy cups from The First Years with interchangeable lids.

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