Milk, and chewing food

[sillymum]

hi,
My name is Angela and i have a baby girl who is 16 months and 3 weeks. She drinks 500ml of milk a day. I find she wont drink milk out of a sipper cup at all. How do i do wean her off the bottle to a sipper cup for her milk.

Another question: When she drinks milk we find her very mucusy behind her nose and her nose basically is constant running. Would that be anything to do with lactose intolerance.

Also when she eats she sometime forgets to chew and swollows how do we encourage her to chew it more and make it easy for her to eat...

[the pero clinic]

Dear Angela,

I’m afraid I can’t answer the question about lactose intolerance – you would need to speak to a paediatrician, doctor or allergist about that.

In terms of weaning your daughter from a bottle to a cup, it always works best when the toddler is a willing participant in the process. To do this, make cup drinking seem fun and exciting. Let your daughter see you drinking from a small plastic cup (whatever sort of cup you would like her to drink from) and enjoy it. Wait for her to ask or reach for the cup before offering her own cup to drink from.

Slowly tip small amounts up towards your bub’s mouth - do not let too much flow in! Again, wait for her to initiate further sips before tipping the cup back to her mouth. Give your daughter praise and encouragement for trying this new skill. Expect that there will be some spills and dribbles as she learns. Encourage your daughter to hold the cup and learn to tip it herself as soon as she is comfortable with the situation.

See my reply to “Swapping Bottles for Cups” in the Cup Drinking section for more ideas about moving past the bottle.

Busy and distractible toddlers can sometimes simply forget about chewing the food in their mouth properly, and just need simple verbal reminders to keep chewing. Sometimes, it can be a bit more complicated and related to actual chewing development, tongue movement and / or the processing of sensory information of food within the mouth. Choking or gagging on food can obviously be an unpleasant and unsafe experience, so if your daughter’s eating of solids doesn’t improve with the removal of distractions at meals and reminders to chew her food, it may be worth seeing a feeding specialist.

the pero clinic