Favorite Straw Sippies

Having a child makes you think about a lot of things differently. For me, one of those things was: How do you teach someone to use a straw? Particularly when that someone is barely a year old and communicates mostly with grunts and cries?

It definitely took some time, patience and repeated opportunities for Sly to figure out straws. And I can’t say that I really think I “taught” her — one day, she just got it.

I was a little anxious about getting her onto straws, because of research that indicates that traditional sippy cups can contribute to speech delays or unclear speech in some kids. But it’s not something you can force, either.

I tried a couple of different straw sippies. Since we’d had such good luck with Munchkin spout sippies, I tried their larger, silicon straw sippies. The valve is built into the straw and I like that they flip securely closed.

Munchkin Mighty Grip 10 oz. Flip Straw Cup

It’s recommended for kids over age 2, but this was the one that helped Sly pick up the whole straw concept, and we’ve been using it ever since. My only beef with this cup is that in order to wash the straw well, you really need to disassemble the entire thing — which means popping out the flip-top. A bit of a pain, but not much.

The other straw sippy we use is from Take & Toss.

Take & Toss straw cups from The First Years

It’s a good, basic straw cup — but the straw is much firmer (and therefore, doesn’t spring back from being chomped as well). Also, Sly was used to tipping the Take & Toss spout cups back to drink from them. So she did that with the straw cup as well at first — I think if I’d used a totally unfamiliar cup, the difference would’ve been clearer to her right away.

Both types of cup are BPA-free, top-rack dishwasher-safe, and have replacement straws available to buy separately. From a quick price check, it looks like the Munchkin replacement straws are $6 for two, and the Take & Toss are $2 for four.

Favorite spout sippy cups

We went to sippy cups early. Sly was breastfed and only tolerated bottles as long as she absolutely had to — which for us was six months.

So we started trying sippies, which luckily she liked. We had the best luck with the silicon spout, built-in-valve sippies from Munchkin. I didn’t much care for the sippies with valves (a la Playtex) — they seemed to take a lot of work for Sly to get the liquid out, no matter how much I fiddled with them.

Mighty Grip Trainer Cup from Munchkin, 8 oz.

Once we went to hard-top sippies (which my pedi recommended that we be using exclusively by 12 months), I turned to the Take & Toss cups. They’re inexpensive, the right size for Sly to manage, and super simple: lid and cup. No extra parts to wash or adjust, and they’re BPA free and dishwasher-friendly.

They fit nicely into my diaper bag’s pockets or the cup holders of our car. If I leave one somewhere, no big deal — they come in packs of five.

Take and Toss sippy cups from The First Years

I also appreciate the fact that they come in a smaller size as well, with an optional handle attachment that helps secure the lid better. (All of the lids and handles will fit the small or larger cups.)

Trainer cup with handles from The First Years

If your little one is the type to pry off lids, the handle attachment may be a good way to foil them.

My one not-so-stellar observation about these cups is that we tend to go through a lot of the lids. Sly likes to chomp on them, and when she was getting her front teeth, she would bite so hard she’d crack the spouts. So I’d buy another pack and then have a ton of the cups but always be hunting for a lid.

I do notice a leak now and then, particularly as we wear out the lids — usually only when Sly leaves her sippies scattered around the house lying on their sides. But since Sly is still only drinking water, having a 100% leak-proof sippy isn’t that big a deal to me.