Spilled Milk

[spud912]

Thank you all so much for the ideas and tips!

Gosh I re-read my post and I made it seem like she is crazy at the table . She isn't out of control, but she "adjusts" herself frequently. She also is not very aware of her arms and they tend to sweep across the table.

So to answer some of your ideas/questions, here goes:

• I have trained all children to keep their cups above their plates near the center of the table. In fact, they also keep their fork to the left of their plate when it's not in use. She is very good at keeping her cup where it belongs, but she has super long skinny arms that reach (or sweep) far.
• I do require everyone to clean up their messes (this includes picking up scraps of food off the floor and throwing them in the trash if they were eating especially messy and dropped big chunks). In her case, she wipes up milk with a cloth towel and then I go over it myself. Our table is great for our family in general, but it is a bear to clean when liquid pours all over it because of the turntable. Obviously, if I could go back in time and pick a better table for child care, this would not be it ::, but it's what we have to work with.
• What I have been doing is having her get down, clean up her mess and then she is done eating for that meal. For the remainder of the day (during meals and snacks), she sits in a booster seat and I put the lid on her cup.
• We do have a sensory bin and she is surprisingly very good at pouring. Like I said, she does great with the cup, it's that she is clumsy with her arms and wiggling .

Of all the kids, she is the only one who spills her cup! I have one other dck who is a wiggler as well and I do put him in a booster as well if it gets out of control (but that is only because I get worried for his safety....he has a tendency to "rock" the chair).

I think what I will do is a combination of several tips. I will continue what I have been doing but use the straw sippy cup instead for the remainder of the day if she spills. I will also only give her the cup when she needs a drink. I really think the underlying problem here is the wiggling. She isn't playing, but she needs to stop readjusting constantly and be more wary of her arms.

[providerandmomof4]

I'm probably going to get a lot of flack here about this but here goes...all my kids drink from sippy cups until they are about 5-6 years old. They all know how to drink from open cups and I'm not going to be doing the extra cleaning you're describing. It's not going to hurt them to use sippy cups if they are developmentally capable to use open cups.

If a child is transitioning from a sippy, I may offer a few sips throughout the day from an open cup as I supervise the drink, but at meals...it's all sippy.

I also do not give the kids their drinks until they finish eating as I've learned from experience that many will down their drinks and fill up on the drink and not eat regular food. They are never too full to drink...

You're not getting any flack from me because I'm the same way. I feel like I already spend too much of my day cleaning up and learned a while ago, even with my own kids, that sippy cups save me a lot of grief.

[mamac]

Do any of you use cups with straws? I never used sippy cups with my kids. They went from a bottle right to the First Years Take and Toss cups. They can knock them over and they don't spill and they are more "grown up" than sippy cups. I used them on my oldest until he was proficient at drinking without a lid. I would give them all their "messy" drinks in the lidded cups and let them practice with water in an open cup until they were proficient enough to not need the lidded cups anymore.

And to OP: Don't feel so bad. My ds is 5 1/2 and he still occasionally knocks over his drinks. He just forgets to pay attention to what he's doing sometimes.

[Francine]

Do any of you use cups with straws? I never used sippy cups with my kids. They went from a bottle right to the First Years Take and Toss cups. They can knock them over and they don't spill and they are more "grown up" than sippy cups. I used them on my oldest until he was proficient at drinking without a lid. I would give them all their "messy" drinks in the lidded cups and let them practice with water in an open cup until they were proficient enough to not need the lidded cups anymore.

And to OP: Don't feel so bad. My ds is 5 1/2 and he still occasionally knocks over his drinks. He just forgets to pay attention to what he's doing sometimes.

[ATTACH]1526[/ATTACH]

These are exactly what I use!

[Childminder]

I don't know if these links will show up or not but get a non spout trainer cup for your daughter. The have an edge like a regular cup but reduce spillage. If the links didn't show google "no spout training cups".

[Angelsj]

Lol I can not even imagine seeing a 5 year old drinking from a sippy cup. I learned a couple years ago that the muscles that are used to drink properly from an open top cup are the same muscles they use for talking. My oldest son is 16 and I had NEVER heard that. :confused:

I'm not judging..... whatever works for you I've just always been against sippys for older kids. I personally think it's a bottle in the shape of a cup.

Not willing to clean up milk here. ALL my kids (even my 17yo) use contained cups. WHAT they use varies, the older kids use water bottle type containers, but it is all contained. They are quite capable of using unlidded cups, but honestly, I don't want to mess with it, and there are a LOT of electronics around here that just cannot get wet. It is almost always a younger child that spills an older child's cup, then there is all this uproar.

For the four year old, I would use one of these. I push a hot screwdriver through the top sippy thing, so it does not require suction, but if it dumps, it is contained. Or the straw one.

Since it is your own child, perhaps trying at supper time (without all the other kids getting her excited) might be better for the open cup?

[Lavender]

My daughter always used to spill things. It just seemed like she was careless/clumsy. She would have been the child to allow her arms to knock over her cup every single day. I tried everything I could to get her to be more careful and attentive and it didn't seem to work. Finally at the age of 8 I found out that along with the learning disabilities and speech issues I knew she had, she has a number of neurological issues that caused all of that. Basically it seems that in most areas, the messages being relayed to her brain get disrupted along the way. In regards to something like the cup with my daughter, the message to her brain is probably not telling her with 100% accuracy where the cup actually is increasing the likelihood that she will accidentally knock into it. When I found that out I felt terrible for all the times I got upset thinking she was being careless. I'm just putting this out there as a reminder that sometimes, rarely, there is a real genuine reason why some kids can't master the same normal and common skills as other kids even when it is not fully evident.