Practicing cup drinking in the bathtub

Learning to drink out of a cup is never a neat proposition. To get around some of the inevitable spills, Mark gives his son a cup in the bathtub, and everyone's happy.

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Comments

[Christy]

Good idea. I also give my kids medicine in the bathtub so if it dribbles I can just rinse it off.

[Chuck Charbeneau]

Seems like a good idea, but do you then have to teach the "Don't drink the bathwater" lesson first? And if so, is it confusing for them?

Should you actually use something /other/ than water in the cup while they are in the tub to eliminate confusion?

I over think things sometimes.

[r, j & a]

My son has all kinds of little cups in the bathtub and contunually tries to drink the soapy bath water. I do think he is actually trying to learn though instead of really wanting to drink it but I am always wondering if I should just take his cups away.

(he really doesn't get much of it in his mouth)

[radmama]

That's how my first learned to drink from a cup! We had an old plastic cup in the tub to rinse him off and he showed us he had been paying attention to what the grown ups do with cups.

I don't think we bothered chatting about not drinking the bathwater until after they were one. In the meantime, I tried to fill the cup from the tap when he wanted to drink.

[mark]

We were giving our son the cup in the bath, but once he had drunk his fill, or lost interest, the cup was put out of site and it's time to play with one of the duckies.

The idea is get him to understand the concept and technique, with out having to have clean up the spills. It worked well.

Actually, I learned from Asha that we were using a training cup, when I thought we were using a sippy cup. Durrrr. The cup that we first bought came with two caps, one as a sippy and one as a training spoon thing-a-ma-jig. We now use the sippy cap more often, but still the idea to practice in the bath worked out well.

[Scott]

I'm on the not such a good idea side. With all the soap and everything else, might not want the kids drinking the bath water. Parenthacks had an earlier post on using a sake cup to teach cup skills. I've been doing that with our two year old since the posting and it works great.

[Heather]

We let Holden play with a funnel in the tub... he doesn't learn to drink, but he also doesn't drink the bathwater. He's about 11 months old.

[Family Man]

My son drinks bathwater all the time, but I worry because he also pees in the tub. Perhaps it's so diluted it's not a problem?

[mark]

Maybe I have not explained the technique well enough, because there is absolutely no drinking of bath water risk. While he is in the bath (with me, that is, we have nice big baths in Japan) I hand him the cup a third filled with juice or tea (tea for babies that is). He sees the cup and of course wants to grab it. I help him out with it, getting it up to his cute little lips and then I let him try it on his own. Of course he dribbles and spills (he likes to grab the handles and swing it) but he gets used to holding the cup and figuring out how that is he can actually get that yummy juice if he doesn't spaz out so much.

His practice time lasts about a minute or two, and then I put the cup aside and that is that. If he did happen to drop the cup into the bath (he never has) then I would probably dump all the contents and let him have the empty cup and tell him there is no more.

There is no risk of him getting a cup full of bath water at all. Zero.