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I’m a 36 year old able-bodied man sneaking sips from my dad’s sippy when it’s ice-cold elixir of the gods inside.
Of course, I’m talking about assistive sippy cups, the kinds that are easy to drink from and don’t spill easily.
As a caregiver, the more I sip the more I wonder.
We’re big fans of the stylish no-spill Contigo kids sippy cups for my dad #ad who’s 74 living with Parkinson’s and dementia.
We use our stainless steel Munchkin 360 sippy almost daily.
But both of them require my dad to use his arm and elbow to sip from the cup.
I hopped online to identify a viable straw-built-in sippy, that extends my dad’s thirsty lips reach but 2.6 inches more, which doesn’t count for much in terms of elbow grease.
Awesome sharks added bonus. But it went out-of-stock on Prime Day when I was shopping for myself and caregiver gift givers around America, so I switched to a similar tumbler-straw sippy in a beautiful shade of insulating blue.
Do date, it’s easy to use, except you gotta tighten the lid just right.
The straw is built into the lid, so big chunky ice cubes make it hard to get closed properly, and my kitchen fridge is missing an automatic ice crusher.
For Contigo drinkers like my elderly dad, the short straw of the Leighton is more difficult for my dad to reach than the Aubrey.
My original wish to expand my dad’s range of sip-ability seemed to have failed, because his chin became a barrier to his lips reaching around the mouth of the straw to draw in refreshing beverage.
The Leighton couldn’t beat the Aubrey’s levels of elderly usability.
So I sipped… And I sipped…
My dad and I had some soft-body reusable silicone straws lying around the cupboard from our last sugar-free energy drink bucket party.
We get hyphy and hydrated with our sippies any time it feels right or we’re feeling dehydrated.
With a calm careful push, I wrapped the silicon straw body around the tip of the Leighton’s built-in straw, and was amazed to see it fit like a glove.
But could it sip?
The moment of truth!
So I sipped… And I sipped…
Sure enough, Marvin Chester Stone’s 1888 fundamental sippy principles hold true today.
When you seal a straw to another straw, and there’s no leaky hole, then you can suck through the far straw to elicit liquid through the near straw from the enclosed cup chamber.
Your drink of choice sips all the way through.
It's the best sippy cup my dad and his dementia have handled at nighttime in a while.
What this Gratiot County family caregiver discovered today is nothing less than an innovation that could shift the world’s top sippy manufacturer’s focus to the growing eldertech industry.
Is this the future of sippy cups for disabled adults and the elderly? Or is it just a HydroBak with a cup on the other end?
This family caregiver is proud to now also be a caregiver inventor nonetheless.
