As your baby grows and you’re finally ready to introduce a cup- let’s skip the sippy cup.
I know- I know- you’re thinking- I’ll stop reading now. The mess- ugh- nobody has time to clean that mess if my child is not using a spill proof sippy cup!
BUT – did you know it’s not a developmental skill to be able to drink from a sippy cup?! That’s right! In fact, your baby never needs to drink from a sippy cup in order to develop good oral motor skills for feeding and speaking! What’s even crazier is that even a 6 month old can begin learning how to drink from an open cup.
The truth is, using a sippy cup can actually hinder your child’s overall speech, language, and feeding skills. To understand this, we need to dig in a little deeper to understand tongue function for swallowing.
Infants use a swallow pattern characterized by anterior-posterior (front to back) tongue movement, which allows them to move milk from the breast/bottle from front of the mouth to the back in order to swallow it safely. Around 1, the swallow should flow into a more mature swallow pattern that includes lifting the tongue up to the palate and using a wave like motion of the tongue to move food and liquids back for the swallow.
A sippy cup rests on the front of the tongue and stops it from elevating when swallowing, which leads to the continued use of an immature swallow pattern and low tongue posture. Mealtimes are a lot messier when the tongue moves forward during the swallow! (spitting out food, losing liquids, etc)
With continued low tongue posture, as promoted by a sippy cup, we often see a tongue thrust emerge. A tongue thrust is when the tongue comes out of the mouth through the teeth at rest, while eating, and/or when speaking. A tongue thrust impacts speech development, leading to misarticulations, specifically with sounds /s, z, t, d, l, n/.
Low and forward tongue posture (caused from prolonged sippy cup use) can lead to open mouth posture. If the tongue isn’t resting on the palate and the mouth is open, we see narrow palates, misaligned teeth, and even attention issues arise.
While they are convenient, I would encourage parents to use sippy cups judiciously (ideally, skip them altogether) and for the majority of the time give their child an open cup or straw cup. Want to know which cups we like and recommend? Check out next week’s blog post.
