In the children’s play area, you will often see two or three year old babies, still drinking from a bottle. Do mothers know? Drinking from a bottle for a long time is not good for your baby! Drinking water should be done with a cup! When a baby sucks on a pacifier, the upper jaw and tongue are squeezed because of the force of the mouth, pushing the upper row of milk teeth forward and the lower row backward, making it impossible for the upper and lower rows of teeth to get close together. In the long run, the baby’s upper and lower teeth will not bite together properly, affecting the chewing function of the teeth, and in serious cases, even affecting the development of the baby’s upper and lower jaws, allowing the baby to form a high palatal arch of “bottle mouth”, “buck teeth”, making the baby ugly. It may also affect the baby’s future pronunciation of words. The benefits of the baby’s cup 1, to promote the development of oral and lip function The baby’s change from using a bottle to using a cup indicates that from the past relying on oral sucking into the development of oral and lip sucking, greatly promoting the child’s oral function. 2, baby towards independence From the bottle to the cup, marking the baby’s growth change, no longer lying in the mother’s arms of the little baby. This signal will give the baby a great encouragement, thus making the baby more eager for further independence. 3, enhance the coordination of development Baby drink from a cup by themselves, can train their small hand muscles, develop their hand-eye coordination, exercise the coordination of limbs, eyes, hands, brain development. 6 months can begin to prepare for work After 6 months of age, your baby can learn to use a cup with a straw or a sippy cup. Or he is ready to use a cup to drink when he shows these signs 1. When you feed your baby with breast milk or a bottle, his eyes keep looking around elsewhere; 2. His mouth bites the nipple but does not suck; 3. He tries to slide off your lap before the feeding is over. How to train your baby to use a water cup step by step Your baby needs to be trained step by step to master it gradually. 1. 6 months: pacifier training cup When your baby is at the 6-month-old stage, you can train him to use his hands to grasp and hold things. But at this stage children can still only suck food, so parents can use a bottle-type training cup for their child to train him to bring the cup to his mouth accurately. 2.7-9 months: Duckbill training cup The drinking mouth of this training cup is designed like a duck’s beak, which allows the child to drink more water in one sip, which is good for the child to use the water cup later. 3.10-12 months: Wide mouth training cup At this age, the child’s grasping and sucking ability has improved, so you need to choose a cup with a larger water flow than the duckbill training cup, which is a wide mouth training cup. This kind of training cup does not have a protruding drinking mouth, and is more similar to a normal cup. 4, 12-18 months: straw training cups Parents better not let their babies use such training cups too early, because children who are not yet a year old like to bite things, so they may bite off the straw on the water cup, thus the crisis. After the child is one year old, although they will also bite the straw, but can better judge the danger, the possibility of swallowing the straw is very small. 5, 18 months or more: ordinary water cups, starting from imitation Through the previous months of training, one and a half year old children have mastered the method of drinking water, this time you can use ordinary cups for children to drink water. In the beginning, pour a small amount of water into the cup, and let the child use the cup only at a certain meal time (for example, noon) every day, and demonstrate how to bring the cup to the mouth and how to tilt the cup to drink the water; the mother will do the demonstration and the baby will imitate it. Parents should be patient enough until the child can drink most of the water down. Warm tip: It takes about 6 months for a baby to be completely happy to drink from a cup. Parents should let their babies learn slowly according to their children’s interests and wishes.