goofyfish
02-13-02, 12:47 PM
Consumer alert to parents: sippy cups might be turning your child into a mumbling moron.From the Chicago Tribune (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-020212sippy.story?coll=chi-business-hed)
Warnings are coming from two fronts: First, some speech pathologists say children are using sippy cups long after they should have made the transition to a traditional, lidless cup. They're still sucking and slurping when they ought to be swilling and gulping. The consequence: a lazy tongue that produces sloppy "th" and "st" sounds, at least temporarily.
Nursery-school teachers were among the first to raise concerns.
"What we've noticed in the past five or six years is that articulation for young children has totally disappeared," says Gail Smith, director of the Gingham Giraffe Preschool in Chatham, N.J. "And I directly attribute it to the use of sippy cups."
Smith first heard about the concerns from a speech therapist. Before warning parents at her nursery school to ditch the cups, she took one home and drank from it herself for a weekend. She became concerned that sucking a sippy cup was a lot like sucking a thumb. "You do tend to leave your tongue under the cup," she says.Peace.
Warnings are coming from two fronts: First, some speech pathologists say children are using sippy cups long after they should have made the transition to a traditional, lidless cup. They're still sucking and slurping when they ought to be swilling and gulping. The consequence: a lazy tongue that produces sloppy "th" and "st" sounds, at least temporarily.
Nursery-school teachers were among the first to raise concerns.
"What we've noticed in the past five or six years is that articulation for young children has totally disappeared," says Gail Smith, director of the Gingham Giraffe Preschool in Chatham, N.J. "And I directly attribute it to the use of sippy cups."
Smith first heard about the concerns from a speech therapist. Before warning parents at her nursery school to ditch the cups, she took one home and drank from it herself for a weekend. She became concerned that sucking a sippy cup was a lot like sucking a thumb. "You do tend to leave your tongue under the cup," she says.Peace.