Beaker is better?

Trying to get your baby using a beaker.

After 6 months your baby can switch to a beaker between bottles. This is a great step towards your baby using a cup. But what if s/he doesn't like sippy cups?

Our son Rohan would not take a sippy cup but instead wanted to drink from a normal cup, as much as I was proud of this I didn't like the idea of him turning the cup upside down on himself and ALL the contents flowing over his face at once. So I tried the beaker, he closed his mouth and shook his head, screamed, or threw it across the room when we first started. It was either bottle or mummy's cup.
So we started trying other ways of getting him interested in using the beaker.

1. Letting him play with the beaker (with no liquid in)
2. Putting his favorite drink or forbidden drink like sprite in the sippy cup. (I know, I know)
3. Using the beaker ourselves so he could see how it works and know that it was fun.
4. Trying different beakers/sippy cups to see if he preferred a specific one.
5. Using the one beaker that he seemed to enjoy playing with the most.
6. Persisting even when we went two steps backward.

After a LONG battle between beaker and cup he finally started drinking from the beaker! We still get lots of spillage, partly because he thinks its funny to turn it upside down. You can get beakers which don't leak even when you turn them upside down but Rohan seems to hate those (of course) he likes sipping rather than having to suck. We've let him use a normal cup every now and again but most of the time I end up having to hold it otherwise he drowns his shirt in water/juice or chokes from gulping too much at once.

Our Top 2 Beakers

1. Disney Winnie the Pooh baby easy-sipper hard spout cup beaker 6m+

This beaker is great because it's non spill but you can also take out the non-spill mechanism if you decide you want full flow. Comes in many different colours.

2. MATA 4-piece eating set, green (But mainly the beaker) from IKEA

This one is Rohan's favorite. Its a flow sippy cup, easy clean and great for all the things Rohan puts it through like throwing, sitting on it and waving it around in the air. 

What helped your little one start using a beaker?