For over six months now our little toddler Jake has been off all of his baby bottles and using sippy cups except for the last bottle of the day. He was still getting to drink his nighttime milk from a bottle before going to sleep as part of our bedtime routine.
We have known we should totally wean him off bottles for a while now (It was one of the milestones on our 15 month checkup) but we have always found a reason to put it off and postpone the inevitable disaster. He would get sick, we would not feel well, daddy had a stressful week, etc and we would say – ok, let’s push it back until we have a calm week ahead. We were definitely not looking forward to the screaming, not going to sleep, and waking up in the middle of the night.
Finally we decided it had to be done and our toddler was going to give up his last bottle. We set our plan and routine. We would go for a walk, take a bath, read books, let him drink milk from his special straw cup, and then go to bed. We were now ready for the certain disaster.
So we did it. On a Tuesday night we walked, bathed, and gave him his straw cup instead of bottle and guess what we found?
Jake had fun reading books with us before bed.
He drank an entire cup of milk and wanted more.
He gave us night – night kisses and smiled.
He went right to sleep with no fuss and slept all night.
What could we have possibly been dreading? I think the lesson for us personally on this one is that sometimes we let our own dread or potential discomforts negatively influence how we think `our children will react to a situation. Our assumptions that our toddler would have a hard time dealing with giving up the bottle led us to postpone an important milestone. Sometimes we don’t give our toddler enough credit for being developed enough to accept change and adapt to new or different situations. Up next – potty training. Boy am I dreading that one…
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