How to get an 18 month old to drink milk from a cup?

[Cluelessbee]

My eighteen month old categorically refuses to drink milk from a cup. She'll only drink it from a bottle. We've tried free flow beakers, munchkin 360 cups, a doidy cup, different straw bottles. No matter why type of cup we use, she will not drink her milk. She will gladly drink water from any of these cups. We've put the bottles away from the around ten days ago and she is still refusing milk. Any advice?

Why does she need to drink milk?

The NHS advises 350ml OR 2 servings of food made from milk every day. So if she’ll have yoghurt, milk on cereal, cheese etc. then you’re fine and don’t need to worry about her drinking milk.

Why do you want her to give up drinking her milk from a bottle?
There's nothing wrong with a bedtime bottle at 18 months.

She's still only little, maybe she could just have a bottle of milk before bed and water during the day and make sure she's getting dairy as food instead

My 18 month old still drinks milk from a bottle...no plans to stop that any time soon!

Bottles aren’t good for teeth so the advice is to drop bottles after 1. I totally can see how you might want to go on longer if it’s a key part of the bedtime routine, because sleep is so important for everyone, but it makes no sense to keep bottles past 1 if it’s just to get the toddler consume milk, because nutritionally they don’t need it and (for example) a cheese sandwich for lunch plus a yoghurt after dinner would provide everything they need.

Just give cheese and yoghurt and drop the milk if she doesn’t want it, they don’t need it at this age as long as they’re getting enough calcium elsewhere.

Only if they're on a bottle all day every day drinking sugary drinks

A bottle of milk a day isn't going to cause any significant issues

My DS refused to drink milk from a cup. It's fine as long as she's having lots of other sources of calcium in her diet (cheese, yoghurt, milk on cereal etc). She doesn't need milk as long as it's replaced by the equivalent nutritional items.

My DS was the same and as he got older he went right off milk. He won't even have milk on cereal anymore, not a big problem, he has yoghurts and cheese instead.

Nice to see this. My 27 month old still has it from a bottle as he just won't have it in a cup and I'm not leaving him without to prove a point to a toddler 😂

Mines got Cmpa and won't take anything else rich in what he needs so I don't see the problem myself 🤷

Same here with my two year old

The stupid pressure we get to make babies drink from a cup at only 12 months! Absolutely ridiculous! They'll never drink enough to fill their bellies by sipping/spilling.

Keep going with bottles OP.

I introduced an open top cup whilst doing baby led weaning at 6mo, and my son got the hang of it really quickly. This was with water only. Unfortunately when he had his autism regression I could not longer trust him not to chuck water everywhere so he’s 3.5 and still using a sippy cup or bottle. The only thing I’d say about milk in an open top cup is if that spills on anything like soft furnishings it will stink to high heaven.

Thanks for your input everyone. I would like to drop the bottle as it has been recommended to do so by our health visitor and dentist. I'll keep offering her other sources of dairy and maybe give the milk a short break and try again in a week or so.