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How to wean a child from a bottle?

, medical expert
Last reviewed: 19.10.2021
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You can not take the child out of the bottle in one day. This will take time. As well as weaning the child from a nipple or pacifier, this process needs to be stretched a little, so that the child does not get stressed. If a child often used a bottle while on artificial nutrition, then immediately take away from him this familiar and beloved thing will be simply inhuman. We need gradualness.

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When to wean the child from the bottle?

You can remove the baby from the bottle when he is comfortable drinking from a cup and eating a spoon from a plate. That is, around the time when the baby learns to sit himself, even without leaning on the handles. As the baby grows, he will need more and more products, which will be difficult to take only from a bottle. Need a plate and a cup.

And again: if a child will often suck a nipple from a bottle, it can break his bite. But parents should know that the age at which it would be worth starting to wean the child from the bottle is individual. If without a bottle the baby is not at all possible, if for him it is an opportunity to eat normally and psychologically the bottle is an attribute of safety and coziness, maybe it's worth to wait with the child's abstinence.

Psychologists say that sometimes you should not wean the baby from the bottle, but you need to wait. Not the best moment for the ablation of the baby is the recently transferred stress, illness, separation from the mother, moving, the birth of a brother or sister. With the help of a bottle, the baby calms down, so you can not take this opportunity from him. When the acute period of stress passes, you can start weaning from the baby's bottle.

The reaction of the baby to weaning from the bottle

According to the reaction of the child to excommunication from the bottle, you can accurately determine whether he is ready for this expropriation or not. If the baby cried a little and forgot about the bottle, doing something more interesting, then, psychologically, he is ready for it.

If the child can not calm down for a long time, cries, arranges a hysterics, asks for a bottle back (it can even raise the temperature), then you did not choose the best moment to wean the child from this attribute. In this case, do not insist, offer him a cup instead of a bottle, not now, but later.

Ways of weaning the child from the bottle

Some mothers practice a crafty conversation. They explain to the kid that the bottle has disappeared somewhere, some even write whole stories about where the bottle went. Sometimes after a few whims it works, and from the bottle of the kid manages to wean.

There is another way: to replace the baby bottle with a cup. At the same time show that you yourself drink from a cup and that it is very tasty. Mom's here and they start on the trick: they make a tasteless milk in a bottle, re-salting it. And they pour tasty milk in a cup. Then the child himself can make sure that the cup is better.

The next way to wean a baby from a bottle is to give it to someone, but not just so, but solemnly. The bottle can be decorated, even put on clothes and give it to someone, for example, a doll or a bear. If the baby is more sorry for the bear than the bottle, he will give it back and will be very pleased. He is now big, Mom and Dad explain, and can give a bottle to a little bear who very much wants milk. If a child is more sorry for a bottle than for all animals taken together, he will not give it up for anything. And this method does not fit, and weaning should be postponed until better times.

Parents can also take out a bottle from their own bottle according to their own scenario. You can come up with it and make a whole holiday out of it. Let him make not only parents happy, but also a child!

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