Rating: 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎 (5/5)

I purchased the Lamaze Pile & Play stacking cups on a whim at Target when my oldest was six months old.  Little did I know, this would be one of my BEST baby purchases of ALL time!  In fact, we have close to five sets of these stacking cups now.  We have our living room set, basement set, on-the-go set…you get my drift. 😊 

Although the Lamaze set I bought is currently out of stock at Target, the First Years Stacking Cups, are very similar.  While there are a lot of trendy “baby neutral” stacking cups, commercialized “licensed character” (e.g. Sesame Street, Baby Shark), and light-up/noise-making options, I really prefer the very basic, primary color ones.

The “baby neutral” cups may look great in a trendy nursery, but function over form is very important to me as a mother of an autistic child.  I want my little ones to learn as much as possible (as quickly as possible), even if it doesn’t match my home’s color scheme.  (Frankly, I’ve given up on the pipe dream of living in a home that looks like it’s from an Instagram page).  While the baby neutral tone cups are pretty, the colors are not easily identifiable for speech therapy purposes (more on this, below).  When teaching colors, “mauve” doesn’t translate as well to a young child as “red.”  I also find that my ASD kiddos are attracted to bright, primary colors over monotone ones.
 
The “licensed character” cups and light-up stacking cup options are certainly fun, but again, they don’t give you as much flexibility for building in learning games.  Over the years, I’ve had enough speech therapists tell me to focus on toys that do not make noise (or turn off the noise features), so that you can improvise with your own sounds, and thereby encourage your non-speaking child to mimic you and later develop sounds and speech. 
 
I’m really impressed with the longevity of this toy. My oldest tot played with these cups long before he was diagnosed with autism, and he still plays with them today – two years later! 

Top Reasons the Lamaze Pile & Play Stacking Cups Earn a Rating of 5 out of 5 Apples:

1. Inexpensive.  With ASD kiddos, it’s hard to tell what they will like.  I paid under under $5 for my set, and at that price, you can’t go wrong!
2. Multi-Use Toy.  These little cups can be stacked (of course!), but they also have tiny holes of various shapes at the bottom so they can double as bath toys.  The basic stacking element is a huge win for our autistic child.  The up/down, repetitive, predictable motion of this game is something my son always found very soothing.  In fact, his little cups were the equivalent of his security blanket when he started day care (and later ABA).  
3. Mealtime Distraction.  I’ve found our autistic kiddo needs to be occupied to eat well.  These cups were instrumental in the distraction game.  Our oldest would bang these on his highchair or have fun placing blueberries in the cups (and dumping them out) while I shoveled food into his mouth.  Our youngest also loved to play “Hats” with these cups.   We place them on our heads and he watches mine or tries to keep his from falling off:  “Mommy wears at hat!; Baby wears a hat!”  Meanwhile, I sneak spoonfuls of food in his mouth.
4. Speech Therapy Resource.  A great speech pathologist turned our “Hat” game into the “Achoo!” game.  Place a “hat” on your head and sneeze (“Achoo!”) it off!  Not only did that simple game keep our kiddo busy, but it helped build his imitation skills (which helps develop speech).  He still loves the “Achoo!” game today.  The repetition of “hat on”/”hat off” are simple ways to reiterate key speech concepts (e.g. on/off).  You can easily expand speech play with these cups to all sorts of key speech concepts:  big/small, in/out, up/down, boom!, crash!, numbers, and colors.
5. Learning Toy.  Not only is this toy great to build speech skills, but you can expand your play to learning colors and numbers.  Each cup has a number imprinted on it, so as your child grow you can work on counting.  These cups give a nice visual and tangible concept to basic counting and color identifying skills.  The visual/tactile element coupled with teaching concepts is very appealing for a mom of an ASD kiddo.  Through the years, I’ve found that my boys learn best by “doing” and through activities.

Happy stacking!  I hope your autistic child enjoys these cups as much as ours!