Episode 124: Transitioning To Cups From Breast/Bottle

Hi and welcome to episode 124 of the Untethered Podcast. It is your host, Hallie Balkan, and today we are chatting all about transitioning from the bottle or breast onto cups, straw cups, open cups, and why we want to skip a sippy cup or a 360 cup. So, hot Topic, I know we always get so much conversation around this and we actually, if you follow me on Instagram, alliebulkin, we actually chatted a lot about this last week. So you're going to want to go back and check out those posts on my Instagram @AllieBalkin to take a peek into some of the visuals of the cups that I recommend. So you have a good idea and reference point, but I'll also talk about those today. All right, let's get started. Quick disclaimer. All information, content and material of this podcast are the opinions of the speakers and is for the informational purpose only and not intended to serve as a substitute for the consultation, diagnosis and or medical treatment of, of a qualified healthcare provider. Welcome to the Untethered Podcast. I am your host, Hallie Balkan. I'm a certified orofacial myologist, feeding specialist and mentor. This podcast is all about getting your questions answered and collaborating with colleagues to bring you the most up to date information in the orofacial myofunctional therapy, tethered oral tissue and airway space. I challenge you to keep an open mind and join my mission to get this information out to the masses. Let's get started. All right, so let's just jump right on in because this is one of my favorite topics and it's something that it's so interesting. I get asked about all the time and it's a hot topic too, because a lot of us parents don't realize that we, when we're transitioning from breast or bottle, they don't realize that the sippy cup is not a milestone, that the sippy cup is not something that is mandatory in child development. Right. And part of that is marketing and we'll talk a little bit about that today. But what I want to do is take you through my recommendations. Why? Those are my recommendations. So you fully understand this is not just my, you know, my preference based on random facts. No, this is based on what we see clinically. This is based on the oral motor patterns that we've observed in our patients. And actually we've tried to drink out of a lot of these, these, we call them vessels, a lot of these vessels, these cups ourselves. And we find it's so fascinating we find that when you drink out of these cups, it's, it's really challenging. And so we're going to talk about everything that we've discovered both amongst ourselves as well as with our little patients. So let's jump into this and this episode is for you. Whether you are a therapist, a practitioner in another space who just wants to understand this better. A patient parent. Maybe you're not a parent yet, but you work with these kiddos or you have, you know, cousins, or, you know, I talked to so many of you and it's so cool to see how many people listen to this and how many of you are hanging out on the Instagram page. Because if we can make this information more readily available, we can do, we can do. We're doing a major favor to our little kiddos, to our next generation of children, rather than doing them a major distance disservice by putting them on a sippy cup or a 360 cup. So why do parents even like these cups? Well, they're convenient. They were created. Right. Sippy cups were created out of convenience. A brilliant parent had an idea that, hey, if we close up the top of the cup and just give them this little spout, then they're not going to dump it all over themselves. They're not going to dump it all over the floor, right? It keeps the floors clean, there's no mess. And hey, they can even walk around with it without spilling. But let's be honest, we really don't want children walking around with them. It's actually dangerous to walk around with a sippy cup. And there are a lot of children who end up in the emergency room because they've fallen on a hard spouted sippy cup and it has damaged the top of their mouth and there's a lot of bleeding and it's just, it's not pretty. So it really can actually do actual harm if you allow them to walk around with it as well as just harm over time if they're, if that's what they're drinking from all day, and especially if they're walking around with it hanging out of their mouth, which we see sometimes. But for all intents and purposes, a sippy cup and, or 360 cup, those are just an extension of the bottle and we're going to talk about that now. As far as, you know, if you're someone who lets your child walk around with, or you see this with your patients and you want to give a parent a suggestion, or you are a parent, you want a Suggestion for, well, ok, how do I break this habit of my child walking around with their water bottle all over the place? You can have a hydration station, okay. And you can make it a central place. Maybe it's the kitchen. Maybe it's just a certain spot in that room where they can walk over, take a sip, put it down, walk away. They don't need to carry it with them. Right. So they can take it from room to room. Or it can just live in one central place in your house, if that makes sense for you and your family. Or a classroom. Right. If you're in the classroom. Generally, these kiddos have access to water at any time, but it's usually like in their cubby or in a certain central place where everybody's water bottles are housed. So we're not talking about withholding fluids because we never want to do that, but we do want to set some boundaries and some rules and have that hydration station, if you will, so that your child knows they can go and drink, but they also know that it's not okay to walk around with it in their mouth. And it's really as simple as just setting a new rule, setting a new boundary and making it exciting and maybe create a little fun hydration station sign and a little circ that they can put their water bottle down on so they know where their water bottle lives. Right. Or cup, if they're using an open cup. Now at mealtime, we sometimes have concerns from parents about, well, hey, Hallie, you're saying you should give my child a straw cup or an open cup. And like, look, I just can't continuously clean up after them if they just constantly throw it off the top of their highchair, you know, they're swatting it off. They think it's funny, it's a game, or maybe it's happening accidentally. You can hand them the cup, right? And if they do that, you can move it off their tray. You can take it away just the same as you handed it to them. You can have it back. You know, if they're at a highchair, sitting at the table, you can move it away so it's out of arm's reach. And then they have to request it. They have to say, you know, water, or sign for water or something that tells you, hey, I want my water. And then you can give it to them. And if they start to throw it, right, you just move it further away and. Or you tell them, you know, oops, it's on the floor. Right? And the whole idea here again, Is we never want to withhold water. We don't want to add to any hydration or dehydration issues. But we do need to set rules and boundaries. And once they understand what those are, the throwing of an open cup over the side of the high chair, the walking around with a cup everywhere, those types of behaviors definitely decrease and disappear. So I know that that is most parents feel a little anxious sometimes when I bring this up. And so I do like to have these conversations so that they. That, you know, that we can be very successful with just putting some rules and boundaries around our. Our hydration and creating that hydration station and making sure that we know, hey, open cups don't belong on the floor. They belong up here. The other thing, too, is start with water, right? Put water in an open cup. When you're transitioning to the actual open cup, maybe you use the straw cup for milk or anything else that you might be giving them, but use water in the open cup so that if it does spill, it's no big thing, right? It's not a big deal because we can very easily clean up water. And, you know, they have to learn. They have to get messy. They may get it on themselves, they may get it on their tray, they may get it on their food, they might get it on the floor, and that's okay. And if we don't react, they're not going to start to throw it over. But if we start to react, then what ends up happening is they throw it again, they knock it over again. Because I just got a reaction out of mom or dad or whoever's taking care of them. And we want to acknowledge, or we want to not acknowledge what they're doing, because if we don't respond, we don't react to that. We act as if it's no big thing. They're not going to constantly push it over. But if we go, oh, no, we don't do that. The floor is a mess. They got a reaction out of us, and they want to see that again because they enjoy that. So just keep that in mind and pay attention to how you react when these things happen, because you'll have much cleaner floors if you don't react. Okay, so why don't we like the sippy Cups or the 360Cups? Cups that would spare us of this inconvenience of having to clean our floors and, you know, it would decrease wet shirts and stained clothing. First, I want to remind you, like I just said at the beginning of this, that sippy cups were an invention of parental, parental convenience. Right. And as a parent, I totally get it. I totally get it. Okay? But here's why I strongly recommend skipping that Sippy in the 360Cup. So it perpetuates, it continues the suckling action which should only be present during breast and bottle feeding. Okay. Now obviously if you're a breastfeeding mama and you want to continue breastfeeding till whatever age you want to continue breastfeeding, you do that. You go, you do, you, you do it. I don't care if that's age 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 months, 18 months. You know, there's cultures that breastfeed beyond age 4. You do you. The pattern in the suck often changes over time as a child gets older or if they are still using a suckling pattern, we may, you know, it may. It will only be present during the breastfeeding. You don't have to worry about that. Right. But gone are the days of suckling when it comes to transitioning to an open cup or a straw cup. And we often recommend that with bottle feeding, we discontinue the bottle by 12 months of age. We wean off the bottle, you know, close to then or by that point. So, so with the, with the suckling, right. That is an infant based motor pattern, we want to change to being able to use our lips to suck water, to draw water out of a straw. And we're going to talk about what cups will help with that so that we're not using too long of a straw that might hold a tongue down. We're going to get into this in a minute. But the other big issue that I see as well is that a sippy cup and, or a 360 cup forces the header or neck into extension. Like putting, put your chin up towards the ceiling, okay. Extending that neck. We do not want that. If you throw your head back and you try to swallow with your tongue on your palate, right now I just did it. You feel a pull at the base of your tongue and through your neck. It doesn't feel good. Okay. If you're swallowing correctly, it does not feel too good to do that. And so what we see happen is these atypical patterns, right? So if your child is struggling on a 360 cup, it's because they're not meant to drink this way. If they take to it immediately or you're using it now, don't feel bad, it's okay. Just switch over. Let's just transition them to something else. Okay. Now you can take the lid off of the 360Cup and use it as an open cup if you will, with that, with the rubber or the silicone part removed. Just know that if your child has any trouble swallowing or they're at risk of aspiration, meaning fluids are going, could possibly enter their lungs versus you know, going down the esophagus, we don't want that. And so if your child has any type of feeding struggles, please do not pop the lid off of the 360 cup and drink that way. This was actually a discussion I think we had like a year ago, Melanie Potok and I. If you don't follow her, check her out. My munchbug. She's great. She made a really good point that this can actually be an aspiration risk because the flow it just, there's too much water coming in from too many little holes along the that 360 cup and it's just so free flowing. And so for a child who's got typical developing skills it might be okay. But for a child who's struggling, I would not recommend that. I would just, I would usually, I would recommend using something like an open cup. And if they're struggling with an open cup, there are other cups out there like an infantrainer and, or the honey bear cup. Those are usually two good therapeutic cups that we recommend and those usually have to be purchased on a therapy based website. But we're not really focusing on that right now. We're really talking about your traditional transition from breast or bottle feeding to open cup and straw cup. Right. So as I mentioned, we don't want to throw that head and neck back into extension. But the other thing I want to point out is that any cup that is non spill and this, you know, so of course the360, a sippy cup or even valved straw cups. Straw cups that are non spill that have like a valve or something attached to the straw. A two way valve, it causes issues, it leads to jaw fixing, they bite down to stabilize, they might suck harder than necessary which is not ideal because it engages certain orofacial muscles that we do not want to be engaging or at least not to that extent because that causes problems over time. We see atypical use of the lips, we see the tongue thrust forward and you know, I've got a great video demonstrating this with myself and my children on my Instagram. If you go to alliebalkin on Instagram and you go to the cups highlight you can see a video and it's actually an IGTV saved that highlight of my Children demonstrating different drink drinking from different cups. And so it's a really good observation of what I'm talking about. And I really walk you through how to see the difference between drinking from these different vessels, if you will. The bottom line here is that these cups cause a child to overwork their muscles to try and pull the water out. Right? And at what expense to keep our floors and their, their clothing clean. I mean, I get it, guys, I get it. Parents, I do, I do. But you're going to spend more on orthodontia and myofunctional therapy later down the road. Maybe not for all kids, but for children who are already on a trajectory of maybe having a recessed jaw and, or a bite that's off, you know, malocclusion, or maybe they have a history of tongue tie or feeding issues or other things going on. If that's already present. This is just going to make the issue worse, which is why we really want to focus on using an open cup and straw cup. So. All right, so let's kind of wrap up that discussion for a second here and move on to another topic that I, I like to discuss a little bit and that is that feeding therapists who are also in the airway and orofacial myology space. And we're going to talk in a minute about some cups that I like too. But I want to point out that we are privy to continuing education on the topic of epigenetics. The changes in our diet. Right. Compared to 50 plus years ago, oral development in the early years, especially in utero, where swallowing begins around 12 to 12 and a half weeks in utero. And the orofacial structures are formed. Right. Including any failure of apoptosis. Apoptosis, right. Which is cell death for those who are not familiar, which leads to a potentially tight, you know, midline tissue like a frenulum like tongue tie or a lip tie, for example, and the very important oral sensory motor development that continues through the first two to three years of life. Okay, so we have, we have access to this education and with this knowledge we know that breastfeeding most closely resembles open cup drinking. Breastfed babies tend to do better than bottle fed babies when learning to open cup drink because they already have similar motor patterns, whereas bottle feeding does not. And again, I'm this, these are just facts, you guys. I'm not saying this to shame you. I'm not saying this to make you feel bad. I am here as a feeding therapist and orofacial myelogist and a mom who has been through this. As you know, if you've been listening to the podcast or you if you haven't been with me for a while, at least go back and listen to the first episode where I share our journey. I've done some updated ones since then, but at least you'll understand where I started with Lily. And my goal here is just to educate. Right? But you do you. I will never shame a mama for using a bottle. I will never shame a mama for not wanting to use a bottle. I will never shame a parent for breastfeeding for three days and deciding this isn't for me or pumping or whatever you had to do. That is your journey. That was your choice. Whether it was what you wanted to do or not, that was your choice. Okay. And I never want anybody who listens to this podcast to feel badly about what you chose to do or what you had to do based on the scenario and either your access to help or lack of access to health and knowledge. And that's why we created this podcast to arm you with the knowledge that you need to make the best informed decisions for you and your family or for your patients, if you're a professional learning listening to this. So let me hop off that soapbox. But I wanted to just share that piece. Okay. So I was listening to Diane Barr, maybe it was when she was on my podcast, this was also like a year ago and she had pointed out that if you look at the Elad et al study. Elad, Elad, if you look them up, you will see that we're born with the suck that we will use for life unless something goes wrong. Unless something happens. Okay, so what happens when something quote unquote goes wrong? Right? Well, when we see certain symptoms as a result of using like suboptimal patterns like I've been talking about that are perpetuated by these cups that our kids are drinking from, these 360 cups, these two way valve straw cups, these sippy cups. Right. I have no problem speaking up and recommending against them, which is why I've shared so much on this topic and why I have created, you know, IGTVs and demonstrations on Instagram for you all. I'm not here to peek. Also, I'm not here to speak poorly about any one particular brand. That's not my goal. But if something is out on the market and I don't agree with the marketing and I think that it's harmful to a child or patients that I'm working with, you better believe I'm going to tell y' all because I am not for things that work against correct oral rest, posture, against being able to speak, swallow, chew, breathe properly. So if it goes against that, even for our maybe typically developing kiddos, right, not just our children who are already, you know, receiving the help they need or, and, or who are struggling and seeking help for swallowing and, you know, feeding in general, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to share this with you, all right? And I'm going to tell you what I recommend instead. That's why we're, that's what we're chatting today. So the other thing I want to point out too is that research, everybody talks about evidence based practice and research this and research that. Research does not exist on a lot of these commercial products, okay? No one's researching them. I don't think that people that. It's well understood that even like the highest level of university and institution produced research is biased. And it's not the end all, be all you need to know how to read the research. And that those who teach it also need to be open to teaching this concept, which they often don't. As well as the fact that our clinical experience is also part of evidence based practice. And there's been a lot of people coming back and speaking against this, even within my own field, which boggles my mind, a lot of them are not parents who have lived through this with a baby who's had a feeding struggle or who have had tethered oral tissues. So, you know, while I will never pull the mom card, I will always say, if you haven't been through somebody's shoes, never judge them, right? Never. You don't have a place to speak if you have not lived. It's just because the evidence based practice has not caught up to what we're seeing clinically doesn't mean that we should be dismissing it, because that's a very dangerous place to work from. But anyhow, hop off that soapbox. All right, so we need to look at the tool itself. I'm sorry, we do want, we do not want to look at the tool itself, but we want to look at the skills that it's promoting or the skills that it's standing in the way of developing or, you know, the deficit areas that it may be causing. Right. And so I've had colleagues who point out, you know, some other colleagues point out that you don't need to study, you just need knowledge of oral motor skill development. And it all makes a lot of sense. And if people truly understand pediatric feeding disorders and oral Motor, sensory, oral, motor development and you know, what happens in utero and how fascia forms in our body and how we are so interconnected when we start to understand that and then we can look at our own clinical data and we can gain, get patient feedback and feedback from dyads from mother, infant dyads who breastfeed, feed, and from, you know, parents who bottle feed their children and other caregivers who are highly involved in feeding these children regularly. This is what should guide our clinical decision making just as much, if not more than a study. Okay. A study is a snapshot in time often and it is not always applicable to real life. I'm just going to put that out there. I think studies are great, I think we need them, I think we need evidence based practice. But it's also very challenging to study certain topics. And that is why you don't see a slew of studies on cups. Right? Nobody's going to pay all this. It's expensive to do research. No one's going to pay all this money, Right. We're not going to have these third party researchers looking at each individual cup on the market. No. That's a waste of people's time and money. They're not going to do that. They got more important things to research. So anyhow, the other thing I want to say too is to those of you who may be newer to this space and who use books in therapy, right? You use children's books in therapy to do an activity or teach something. Do you have a study for every book that you use in therapy? Like how do you know that one has enough different words in the, in the book to promote language growth or address a sounding question without stopping on a page and repeating it 50 times? You don't, Right. You use that as a tool to build the skill because you're a skilled practitioner, right? And so you know where the child is, you know your end goal, you know what skills we need to address to get from the current function level to optimal function. Right? So when there is a tool that is harmful and working against your goals, why would you want to use it? You wouldn't, right? I know this is an extreme example, but you're not going to read a book to a child who's developing language that teaches them curse words more than it teaches them or that they're a bad child. Right. This is harmful to their development. We need to realize that just because something is sold on Amazon or in Bye Bye Baby, it doesn't mean that it's helpful for you or your child's development. Okay. Or your patient's development. So I hope that makes sense. I know that's kind of like an out there example, but sometimes we need to think of things a bit differently in order to kind of wrap our heads around why we don't need studies to know that some of these couples are just harmful to children's development. And again, I will tell you that our clinical experience is part of evidence based practice. So let's not forget that. All right, so there's also a big misconception about research in our field. Many times it's not the speech pathologist field who speak language pathology field that does research that might directly correlate to and impact our therapy. Okay. So we need to look beyond the SLP journals to ent, dental, ortho, gastro, other types of journals to research things directly that might tight and to tie into airway or facial development, musculature, impacts of sleep disorder, breathing, paddle expansion. You know, if you think that these things don't impact your articulation treatment or ability to put sounds together to form a word, then you're lying to yourself. I'm just gonna put that out there. Right? There's more to how it sounds. We need to be looking at the underlying orofacial muscles, the movement of soft tissue and bone together, symmetry, posture, dental occlusion, airway list goes on. You guys know I preach this, right? But it's just crazy to me that there are a group of people, even within my own profession, who can turn a blind eye to this and pretend that our faces don't exist in the therapy that we do. So again, I know a bunch of soapboxes on this podcast today, but it's not just about speech, okay? It's not just about how our speech sounds. It's about proper oral posturing for prepping the bolus and swallowing. It's about correct oral rest, postures with the tongue on the, on the roof of the mouth, the lips closed, breathing through our nose. Teeth are slightly apart in that position as well. Everything that we're talking about impacts orofacial development. And these cups are really important. And as a piece of this puzzle, especially because it's a vessel that they drink out of repeatedly throughout the day. And so they get a lot of practice perpetuating either good patterns or poor patterns. So let's start to wrap this up. The cups that I really, really love, and I made a post on this this past week on Instagram as well. There is an older post that I posted last Summer, I believe. And I think it's become hard to find some of the cups that I recommended. So I wanted to do a little bit of an update. Generally what we want to look for is our cups that, like we talked about before, that are open cups. And you want to start when you're introducing it, you want to start with a smaller cup that's full, close, filled closer to the top. And so when I say a smaller cup, I mean like 2 to 4 ounces, or you can go even smaller than that. You can do a medicine cup. If you want to start with a medicine cup with water filled almost to the top and start with that, I say filled to the top so they don't top so they don't have to dip the. The cup back too much. If it's up there, it'll be easier for them to keep their head in a neutral position and not have to flip their, you know, their chin up, their neck into extension to get more water and as they, you know, try to drink for the first time. So it's really great to have water closer to the top and to use something like a medicine cup or even a shot glass. You don't have to use real glass ones. You can get plastic ones online and, and. Or a small cup that's like 2 ounces. I'd say no more than 4 ounces when you're starting for the first time. There are some companies out there that make cups specifically for this. And so one such group is Easy Peasy. And I believe I have. I'll have to find them and put them in the show notes. I believe I have a code for Easy Peasy for you all. That gets you a discount. I also have a code for Sense of Minds. And Senso Minds has come out with a cup as well that we really like. And it looks different, the Easy Peasy one. So the Easy Peasy one is a little bit more rounded, but the bottom is weighted so when they go to put the cup down, it stands upright and they don't accidentally knock it over, which helps to create a more of a successful experience, which is important. We want success when we're teaching a new skill, even when they're really young. Now, the other cup, the Sense of Minds cup, it is a bit wider at the bottom so that it kind of. It's not like a pear shape, but kind of just trying to think of how to describe it, it gets a little bit water wider at the bottom to create a wider base. And it also is. Has a heavier base as well. Again, the goal is to be able to put the cup down without spilling it over. And so I really love these as first open cup. And now if you're someone who doesn't want to use a silicone cup, you want to use glass. I just, I recommend starting with silicone because it's softer, they won't hit their face or their teeth and have a negative experience. And if it's important for you to use glass, you know you can quickly transition to it once they are a bit more. Once they've mastered it. Right. Once they're a bit more used to using an open cup. So those are my recommendations for open cups. Keep it simple and just again, consider starting with silicone for safety reasons and for positive experiences. Especially because some of these have these weighted bottoms like the senso mines or the easy peasy cups that I mentioned. For straw cups, again, like we talked about earlier, we do not want a valve, okay? No, it's very common in the no spill cups that are out there. We don't want that two way valve. So avoid that. Or if you're able to remove that from the straw, then remove that from the straw. You. It's not always removable though. So just pay attention to what you're purchasing if you want a recommendation. I love the Think Baby cups. They are lightweight, they have them in different materials. So I know some parents really want all glass or all metal. I do believe the tops of them are all plastic. So if that's important to you to use something that's not plastic, you might want to look for a different cup. But I love the Think Baby ones. We use that one with Lily and Mia and they hold up really well because my kids are the kids that drop the cups all the time. And the metal base, metal bottom of the Think Baby cup is fantastic. So I believe they call them the Think Baby Thinkster cups. Now it has a nice short angled straw, silicone straw. And I love that. Why do I love that? Because we want when a child is learning to drink and it also has handles that you can remove. But I love the handles so they can hold it, they can stabilize nicely with the cup and they can bring it up to their mouth. Now the short angled straw allows them to bring it to their lips but not put it past their teeth. We do not want them biting on the straw. We do not want them holding their tongue down with a straw that is too long and perpetuates that suckling action that I said we don't want. Right? And long straws will do that. You can cut a straw and make it shorter, but just pay attention to the type of material the straws made out of, because if you cut like a hard plastic straw, you might make it sharp. And that's not going to be what you want on your kid's lips, right? Or on a patient's lips, a little one especially. So you want to, you know, that's why I love these silicone straws. They're a bit more. They're softer and you can cut them if you need to. But the Think Baby straw usually is short enough that it just goes to the lips and they do not bite it or, you know, hold the tongue down with it. Now, if you do find that they are somehow biting it, you can cut it a teeny bit shorter. Just make sure it's long enough that it goes at least to their lips, so they can round their lips around it. The other straw cups that I love are the Thermos brand cups. So one is the Thermos Fugo and that one is. It's shorter, smaller, and can be really good for introducing a cup. This is a great one. A lot of parents use this for kids who are in daycare because the top closes nicely. The Think Baby one does too, but it's just wider with the handles than the Fugo. And so with the Fugo, if you need something that, like, can go in the side of a backpack or that is just easier to carry around that doesn't have these big handles on it, it's a great option. But then the next step up from that is a Thermos Funtainer. And I love that for toddlers and admittedly my children, that around probably 9, 10 months of age, it is a heavy cup, but they took to it really well. And I was just experimenting with different cups. So, you know, I ran with it. I think Lily was closer to like 11 months maybe when she started. But Mia started earlier because she wanted the cup her sister had. And we see this a lot when there's siblings who just want what the big sibling has. So I let her have it at an earlier age, and she did great with it. Again, you just want to pay attention to the straw, the size of the straw. That again, is a angled straw, which I love because they can bring it to their mouth without having to change their. The position of their neck. And so that really helps position their head for, you know, developing these early drinking skills. So those are my preference in terms of the types of cups that I like. Now, these are not the only cups out there, but they are the kinds of cups that you want to use as examples. When searching for other cups, I often get questions like, well, what about this cup? And what do you think about that cup? There's a, there's a ton of cups out there that can absolutely work. It really depends on what your goal is, if you have a preference about materials, if you are home with your child or you're sending them to daycare and there's just certain rules in place about a cup that needs to be sent. You know, we see a lot of different conversations around these drinking vessels. And so I wanted you guys to really have a good understanding of why I have such a strong stance on this, why it's important for orofacial development, the fact that we don't have research on this because these are independent products on the market. Nobody's going to, no third party is going to come in and pay for independent research on these drinking vessels. That could be off the market in a couple years. Who knows? I'll replace it with something else. But the fact that we also need to be listening to our families, our patients, observing what the child skill level is, what can they do, what's appropriate for them, if they're having, if they're struggling. If you have a child, whether you're a therapist and you're maybe you're not in feeding the feeding space yet or the myo space yet, or you're a parent of a child who's struggling to transition from breast or bottle to straw cups or open cups. And we typically, I don't if I mentioned this, we typically introduce the open cups around 6 months of age and then we recommend introducing the straw cups around like 8 to 11 months of age. 8 to 8 to 12 months of age. I tend to be earlier on though, so that parents have an option and it's not always just open cup. If the child is ready for that, for the straw cup earlier. Anyways. Okay, so let's start to wrap this up. If you have any questions, you can always ask on the YouTube channel. You can always ask on Instagram. Again, there is a, a highlight with information about cups. I've got one about pacifiers. So head over to my Instagram at Hallie Balkan and take a look at some of those videos and especially the one if you're curious to see these different, you know, atypical patterns I discussed that the 360 and the Sippy cups create. You can definitely go back and review those on the, on the Instagram account where I demonstrate with Lily and Mia, my two little ones and myself, the patterns that we see with various different cups. So hope this information is helpful and I look forward to chatting with you guys on Instagram. Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you want to hear more of these Myo Tots, Airway and feedback related episodes, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts or pledge a small amount on patreon.com the Untethered podcast. If you found value, others you know in this space will too. So be sure to share this episode on your social media platforms and join us over on Facebook on my Facebook page at Halibulcan Biz, on Instagram at Alibulcan. And you can head over to theuntetheredpodcast.com to grab a copy the of of the Show Notes where you can also subscribe to be kept up to date on the latest podcast episodes.