The Battle of the Bottle

There came a day in Gordon's toddlerhood when I decided it was time for him to stop using the bottle. He drank from the cup perfectly well, but he liked his bottle and stubbornly refused to let it go. I really didn't want to turn this into a battle of wills--we had enough of those already. So, after some thought, I came up with a strategy that I believed would work.

The first step was to put only water in the bottle. If Gordon wanted juice or milk, he was given a cup, while the bottle remained fully available, filled with water. He adjusted to that without difficulty.

Now for the interesting part. The next time I filled his bottle, I added a fourth part of white vinegar to the water. I figured the nastiness would put him off. I gave him the bottle and he drank it without only a little fuss. Hmmm. The next time he abandoned it, I whisked it away and made it 50/50 vinegar and water.

That was the turning point. When Gordon tried the bottle next, he screwed up his face in disgust. I asked him, "What's wrong?"

He indicated the bottle was nasty, and I offered him a drink of water from a cup. It didn't take him long to figure out that the water in the cup tasted much better than the bottle, and he stuck with the cup after that.

I couldn't toss the bottle yet, though; Gordon was still suspicious if it wasn't available to him. So the vinegar bottle remained around the house for him to sample, which he did for a few days, puzzled at the change in flavor. In time, he shrugged it off and adopted the cup with good grace, and the bottles disappeared unmourned. The battle was won before it ever started.

At least, this one was.