Who knew peer pressure started so early in life?

Sure, the high school years are tough. But the Salamander room at Rock Spring Children’s Center is the true epicenter of fitting in with others.

Matthew’s now creeping up on 18 months, and was attached to his bottle up until about a week ago. Usually a very happy kid, just the mere threat of using a sippy cup to drink milk, created a nuclear like meltdown. He has been behind on a lot of his benchmarks, and we hoped in time that he would take to a cup, but there had been little to no progress in his last classroom.

It was frustrating to pick him up daily and hear the teachers say, “he just doesn’t like it… he cries when we try.” At home we would occasionally try to work it in as well. Piercing screams, pouting, and sitting on the floor… along with tears streaming down Matty’s face would lead us to quickly turn to the trusted bottle.

double fisting

But then Matthew moved to the next class. Sure, he is the biggest kid in his new class, but was the only one rocking a bottle. The new teachers were optimistic that he would transition quickly. After the first couple of days I started to get nervous, the reports coming home were the same. “We tried it, but he doesn’t like it.” I started visualizing Matthew heading off to first grade with a bottle in his Spiderman lunchbox.

However, over the next few days Matthew decided he wanted to be cool like his friends Nathan and Max. In order to fit in with the cool crowd, you certainly can’t continue using the Dr. Brown bottles in the classroom. It was time for Matthew to step up… and now, we are bottle free. Lets just hope Nathan and Max don’t start smoking soon.

And just in case you didn’t know… Matthew also likes milk in his sippy cup.