Here’s a spooky article – actually it’s the transcript of a PBS News Hour report on the chemical bisphenol A (or BPA), which is used in many common plastic products including baby bottles and sippy cups. Depending on which scientist you’re listening to it’s either harmless or quite possibly carcinogenic. While they’re debating the point, it makes me want to switch to glass and ceramic everything. This Breast Cancer Fund web site has more information about BPA and how to avoid it..
Which brings me to my question of the day: Will someone please tell me how to wean Will from his sippy cup? I know they’re useful for sending off to preschool and sure they prevent spills, but I’d love to abandon the things all the same. Instead we over-rely on them to get Will to consume liquids – which he’s sort of finnicky about doing anyway. His glass of orange juice in the morning, and his glass of milk at lunch or dinner sit undrunk. Hand him a glass of water anytime, and he’ll turn up his nose. The only thing that sometimes gets him drinking from glasses is his newly acquired abilitity to blow bubbles in his drink as he sips it down (so I’m not even trying to stop that sligthly obnoxious habit for now).
I tried buying a stainless steel water bottle for him and he thought it was cool for an afternoon, then decided he didn’t want to ever use it again. I’m debating whether to force a thirst strike with the kid and just withdraw all plastic drink-holding containers until he either caves or collapses from dehydration. And all this BPA talk is just another nudge in that ruthless direction.
2 comments:
We initially started with "cutting back" so to speak. He got the sippy twice each day - once at lunch, the other in the afternoon after playing outside. We used straws, cups with favorite characters and (most recently) mini-water bottles. He can't have apple juice straight but we've found he'll drink a few of the clear fruit punch varieties so on occasion we break one of those type of juice boxes out as well. Our speech therapist rec'd cold turkey but that was in the heat of summer and I refused to do so at that time. We're now down to a sippy only once every few days so we've made some progress. And also I am all the time allowing him to have a cup just like mine or my husbands and we all drink at the same time. That half-worked
Thanks for all the ideas. I've tried some of these with less success. We use the old-school straw variety of sippy cup (the kind without the annoying spill proof plastic thing-a-majigs that force kids to suck like high-powered vacuum cleaners to get the fluids down) so moving to drinking out of a glass with a straw would be pretty simple I think. But then there's an even more disposable form of plastic for him to suck it all up with -- so I don't know if there's reason to do it. Hmmm. It'd be nice if all things plastic came with BPA or non-BPA labels so we could avoid the possibly toxic stuff.
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