…but you can’t make ‘um drink.”
The saying is mostly true. E has certainly decided when she’ll arrive at certain infant signposts like sitting up, growing teeth, eating solids, crawling, babbling, etc. In general, she’s in no hurry. She still eats pureed foods. She didn’t coast between pieces of furniture until a week before her first birthday. She doesn’t speak any words yet or point at things. But in the last week, she started standing on her own and walking (1-3 steps at a time) and she introduced a third tooth on Sunday.
My mom used to say humorously–in the context of home educating my siblings and me–that although you can’t make a horse drink, you can hold her head under water until she drinks or drowns. My pediatrician takes the same approach to the bottle/sippy cup conversion.
See in her typical relaxed fashion, E had no interest in the sippy cup. So the pediatrician instructed me to hold a bottle retirement party for E and then only give her a sippy cup, even if it means two days without drinking. Well, it meant 2.5 days with just a few grudging sips. And it meant five days before E happily drank from the sippy cup without assistance. But we’ve arrived. Mostly. E still refuses to drink formula from a sippy cup. As a result, she drinks juice-flavored water during the day and a bottle of half-calf* at night.
Ironically, I’m in the midst of reading David Elkind’s seminal work, The Hurried Child. The book discusses how parents push their children to grow up too fast, too soon, and offers advice on how to encourage healthy development through a joyful, playful, relaxed childhood.
Last summer, I read portions of Elkind’s book, The Power of Play, and was impressed by his research and arguments for letting children learn through play rather than through media and a schedule packed with organized activities. Next on my reading list is Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk and Einstein Never Used Flashcards, two books that debunk the myth of formal early childhood education. (HT: Heather)
*1/2 formula to 1/2 milk in an effort to wean her to milk.
