Spilt Milk: A Sippy-Cup Saga

In her book, The Discovery of a Child, Maria Montessori, describes children in a moveable world where they can sit upon child size furniture then decide to move the chair to another location and take a seat. Somewhere along the way the child may tip over the chair and fall. They get up, set the chair right and try again. The child learns to balance properly in the chair and soon has the task mastered. This observation of Ms. Montessori's coincides with my experience with sippy-cups. Children, like my two oldest, use a sippy-cup almost exclusively for the first few years of life. The cup falls over or gets tossed aside without much thought. Other children, like my youngest who is 14 months old, use a traditional cup most of the time. They are conscious of their actions as they carefully place the cup on their high chair tray. In the past, this cup has also been knocked over, but when it's knocked over, it spills. The young child learns this and is able to "practice" the skill of cup usage at a young age. If your children are like my two oldest, the future for you is a lot of spilt milk. Careless since young, they haven't learned to control their environment and often knock over their glass for months even years after the transition to a regular cup. However, Daisy, my 14 month old, still has spilt milk occasionally, but it's usually after she's tired of drinking and decides it's time to play- after all what's more fun than spilt milk!