My son loves these cups too. I have a couple suggestions for you! After buying cup after cup of the cheapo grippers, I noticed there was a two pack of the same cup only with a wider top, and insulated, and I thought you know maybe the lids are easier on these ones. The main problem with the grippers is that you have to turn them really carefully and line them up just right in order for them not to leak out of the lid. I use the wide mouthed cups now and they basically never leak out of the lid, but after a while of having them and some wear and tear, the silicone spout starts coming apart and then it leaks out of that. I've been buying him new cups but then I thought I could just get the replacement spouts and I found the ones for the wide tops at goodforthekids.com (sorry after all the replies from them it sounds like an advertisement, doesn't it? I just found them though, they were the only ones who sold them). They are... I think like 1.65 each and well basically I got 10 of them for just under $20 bucks, including the shipping. I could definitely not get 10 of the cups for under $20. I thought it was pretty cool and convenient. But I don't know, when you think about it any kind of silicone thing a baby chews/sucks on doesn't last all that long anyway. Nipples and pacifiers and that. You can't expect them to be incredibly durable, if that's what matters most to you then you need to buy the hard spouted cups. What's more important to you - how long it lasts, or how comfortable your child is with it? If it's the lasting, get the hard spouted sippy cups and stop complaining about something soft enough to get chewed up, getting chewed up. The lids however are crappy on the grippers, and I would go with the insulated wide mouthed cups in that case.