Ditch the 360 Cups and What To Use Instead!

Hey, guys. Hallie here. And you might hear some noise because Mia is upstairs with Isabella, and I wanted to hop on here real quick before I start treating at one o' clock and give you a little rundown. I've got some cups here, a little rundown of some of the cups that I don't like. I actually. And Kobe likes to join in the. The excitement too. In addition to, like these, I also really do not like the munchkin360 ones that have the on the side. Let me give him a carrot because otherwise he's gonna bark for the rest of this video. All right, Bobby, I give you a carrot. You have to go away. Stop barking. All right. Okay, I'm back. Sorry about that. Okay, so rewind. Now that Kobe is done barking and Mia is upstairs, probably making noise too. The whole point of me getting on here and sharing my thoughts on the cups and how to transition from. Right. The point of this is how we transition from breast or bottle to getting liquids in another way. Now, we know that there's a ton of things out on the market. I am not. This is not like a campaign against any one company and what they produce. I am just sharing my opinion and my expertise as a feeding specialist and a mom who has a child, two children who are tongue tied and left tied. One who they both have had tongue tie releases. One had both tongue and lip. But my first one could not drink from an open cup. And so I bought all of these cups. Now, the problem with these cups that I later realized when I actually tried drinking from them myself, was that they perpetuate a tongue thrust pattern. When we have infants who breastfeed or. Hey, Lola. Hey, Ivana. When we have infants who are breastfeeding, we want that tongue to come forward and to support drawing the breast into the mouth, filling the palate, and doing this nice pull of the milk back towards the throat to swallow. Okay. When you're on a bottle, it's actually a very different pattern, but again, the tongue is coming forward and it's perpetuating what we might say is sort of like a tongue thrust. We don't call that typical feeding. We don't say, oh, they're thrusting their tongue, per se. But yes, Ivana, I will save this live. Don't worry. What we're looking at doing is actually saving these lives and possibly uploading them on, like, IGTV or something so that you guys can have the whole video. So where was I? So, yes, when we're talking about typical development and where the tongue is Placed. That's very different than when I'm talking about a tongue thrust. And this is a term that some speech pathologists and myofunctional therapists don't love because they don't feel it describes what the tongue is truly doing. I happen to have. No, I take no issue with this term because this is how dentists, orthodontists, pediatricians, parents, this is why they come to us. They come to us and they say my child has a tongue thrust. That's enough for us to know that a feeling, a feeding or orofacial myofunctional evaluation is necessary. So I digress. But we're talking about tongue thrust in terms of what this forces the tongue to do. And I'm gonna try and show you. So these are the cups that I don't love. I also have cups here to show you that I do love. But first let me show you what I mean when I say these cause a tongue for us. And I don't know how well you'll be able to see it. This one is the Dr. Brown's brand and has like a clear top on it and you can see when you tip it over that water does. I don't know if you can see it but water does pool in here whereas with this one you can't see because it's solid. But if we lift this, if we lift the lit the recessed lid up, you'll then have water leak out. Right? So oopsie. The problem with these is that it's been marketed as being a basically spill proof open cup. It is not an open cup. This, which I love by Oxo, is not spill proof. And I'm standing here over my sink so you guys can see this. It's not spill proof but it does have two levels that you can use to help a child who might be learning how to drink from an open cup. And it does prevent it from, from spilling all over you. Right. It kind of directs the water which I love. So let's back up. Right. I don't have. I actually just got rid of all the munchkin ones with the handles. I do sometimes keep these because I like to show my parents and I like to have them try and feel it for themselves so they understand why I'm not a fan of these just because it's so easy to go out to the store and buy one or shop on Amazon and have it know arrive at your door in two days. And I want to make sure parents are not spending a ton of money on Things until they understand what they should buy and why they should buy it to support their child's development. So this one if you can watch me drink. My tongue had to come over my teeth in order to seal the bottom or the other option was it pushed against my lower teeth so so I could bite down to release the liquid. And that is what I'm seeing little kids do with these 360 kind of cups. I am seeing them bite on the edge, bite on the edge and suck the water out to draw it. Tongue is either if they're biting, tongue is pushing against the lower dentition. That is a tongue thrust. The tongue goes back when we typically drink from an open cup. Okay. So when people say okay you don't like those, we get it. They perpetuate a tongue thrust or they kind of force the tongue to thrust against the lower dentition or even against the top, you know inter dentally while we try to pull like I'll show you this one, this one's actually making me bite harder than the Dr. Brown's and this is just. This is an original Wow. 360. I do have some of the other ones that are this color as well. They're the same even though they're kind of. They just look a little bit different. The Dr. Brown's a little bit less but the tongue and I think it's because the silicone material is softer than this one. This one's harder. The tongue for this one thrusts inter gently over my between my teeth to then pull the water in. Well this one actually made me bite and pull down pull the draw the water in. So I hope that makes sense as to why I'm not a huge fan of these now everyone says well what do you like? I don't have it in front of me right now but there is a two ounce cup. It almost looks like a stemless wine glass. I kind of want one for myself from Easy peasy. That is a pure open cup and it's small and it only holds so much liquid and I personally love it because I think it's a great option for teaching open cup drinking and or just using a Dixie cup or something that's the size of a Dixie cup. That's great for teaching a child. One, it's their size. Two it holds a limited amount of liquid and if you only fill it like a quarter of the way when you're starting or even less just so they can get the liquid onto their lip or into their mouth without it spilling everywhere, you get more success from the Start. And I think that's where most parents and even professionals tend to move towards using some of these cups is we don't want the mess, right? We turn them upside down and nothing comes out. I get it, guys. I have a 4 year old and an almost 2 year old. I get it. We don't want the mess. But my 4 year old, who really did not have much of a tongue thrust at 2, she used this and she was tongue tied. And she's been a selective eater since 15 months. And guess who, who has a really obvious tongue thrust that is now impacting her speech. That would be my four and a half year old. And that's why we're doing Maya with her. It was not obvious. She had a clear S up until about a year ago, which is very interesting to me. But I digressed. So what cups do I like? I showed you this one already and I'll show you a little bit more in a second. I also really love thermosfontainers. Let's go to the open cup one because open cup for me is always the ultimate goal. So let's talk about that first. This one as I showed you, if you tip it, it will. And let me turn it towards you so you can see it does. See how it drips down. But look how it's dripping down in a straight line. Look how it's controlling that liquid, right? If I drink throwing water on myself, it went. It went into my mouth centered on my tongue. So not only is it not sending water all over my face, it's helping to direct the liquid into the mouth onto the tongue, which I think is a beautiful thing. The other thing I really love about this is this top pops out. If you see this, there's little lines on this OXO cup. I don't know. Oxo, Oxo. I don't know how you guys say it, but see those little lines? So you can do one of two things. You can take this, that has little grooves that lets the water out and you can line it up so that the flow is a bit faster. So you can line it up so that it's matching the grooves on the bottom. Okay. Or you can turn it slightly. And when you turn it slightly and the groove sits centered between the other grooves, it actually slows down the flow. We have a little bit more control. And so for our new guys, or I have like a client, for example, one of my patients with down syndrome, we started with that because it just gave him less liquid in the beginning and slowed the flow and then we turned it to give him more flow a bit faster. So I really do love that. I don't know if that was their intention when they created this cup, but I love the top and the grooves on this and how you can kind of put it between the two grooves or match it with the grooves to control the flow. So that is fabulous. The last cup I will show you is the Funtainer. And this is from Thermos. They do have a smaller version, but because I have a child who is two and a half years older than her sibling, the younger sibling needed to have this same exact thing as her big sister. And so we went straight from breast and open cup to this. So she does do open cup, but this is primarily what she drinks out of. And so for parents who are really worried about, you know, managing a mess, I love these cups. They're not totally spill proof. If you watch this, it will spill, but it's. Look how. Well actually I don't know how she manages to do this on my couch because she does spill it sometimes, but it's spilling a lot less than your average. Oh, you know what it is? If you tip it all the way over, it comes out of the toss. Now I've never realized this. It comes out of the hole in the top. It's not actually coming out of the drinking part of the straw. Okay, so. So what I love personally about this cup is I like that it's a. It's not too hard to manage it, but it's also not hard. Sometimes kids do need a harder straw and we do. I can always link some other, you know, beginner cups that we recommend that have a harder and shorter straw. But I like the harder and. Right, sorry. I like the shorter straws, I should say. And for a new beginner, I really like this because one, it is angled towards them so they're not, you know, tipping their head. They're actually, actually coming at it the way that we would want them to and they're putting it and she's drinking from this one. So I'm not going to put it in my mouth. But when they put it in their mouth, it can only go so far. So the shorter the straw for me personally, the better for teaching placement and keeping it from going too far back in their mouth, number one. Number two, I really don't like camelback bottles or anything where you have to bite and suck again. That perpetuates a tongue thrust pattern. And I know those are really popular and they make a ton of kids cups. I am anti. Sorry. That's my personal opinion. I see kids with orofacial myofunctional disorders, and I can just tell you that those cups, these cups are supporting what's already in place, that we're trying to unwind and change. So it just makes everything harder because you're not going to change a habit if you still have something in place on a daily basis that's perpetuating that habit. That makes sense. So, kind of to review. I don't love the handheld or these 360 cups. I'm a mom. I'm guilty of using them. I won't say that I never used them with Mia either. She likes them, but I do not use them anymore. We are moving away from them. We are working with open cups. This, this looks like an open cup because, like I showed you, just hard plastic keeping the water back. But there's enough of a deep recessed lid on this cup that it actually functions like a real open cup, which is the beauty behind this little guy. And then, like I said, Thermos Fontaine or straw cup. They have a smaller version for little tots if you want a smaller version. But Lily's been using this since she was probably two before that. Oh my gosh. I bought every straw cup on the market. Everyone that everybody said you should have and you should to try. And this is great. And you know, this is great for the environment. These are great reusable materials, even the ones that weren't. Because as a feeding therapist, I feel like it's my job to know what's out there and what to recommend to families in all price ranges so that, you know, if there's a $5 cup or a $3 cup, I can recommend that. Or if there's a $15 cup accessible for some families and they ask me if it's okay to use it. I also want to know that so we can always talk more about some of the different, you know, cups on the market. But this was prompted by a post that went out earlier today by a company that I absolutely adore. And this is nothing against them by any means, but when I saw it, it went, oh. And I commented and they were receptive. But somebody else on the post who saw it, commented and said, it's the same as an open cup. And I was like, eh, not really. Sorry. I politely disagree. So here we are. Ditch these guys with your sippy cups and invest in some Thermosfontainers and oxo. Oh, gosh. I can find a link for what it's called. I don't. It's not gonna have a name on the bottom. Oops. Spelling. Sorry, guys. This OXO cup, which I. I found this on Amazon, so hope that helps. Guys, if you have questions, feel free to send some questions along. We will figure out how to get this saved and up onto Instagram for you all, whether that be like IGTV or possibly into my highlight somehow. I know that I have a presence on Instagram, but I'm a little bit newer to the video side of things. So bear with me here while we figure that out. I have a fabulous team, so we're going to trial some different things and see what works best. And if anybody has any questions, like I said, feel free to send them on over. I love making videos for you all. I'm happy to show you what I do or what I recommend with my patients and feeding therapy and myofunctional therapy as well. And we will keep recording more episodes with Lily. There's one up right now. And she was, I think, just tired at the end of yesterday, so she was having a hard time following directions. We need to record a video before, like, 8pm at night, so we'll do that soon so that you can get a better idea of how things are going. Because she actually did much better week one than she did last night when we created the video, and she's been doing much better in between. But that actual video was. She was a little bit tired last night, so. All right, guys, have a great day. I am also doing my own eval in about 20 minutes and followed by a bunch of feeding patients and myo patients, so chat soon.