Moooooo Juice!!

I like my boys to drink milk, too. When I first took my oldest of the bottle, I couldn't get him to drink it. I found these straws at Walgreens called Sippah Straws. They have little flavor granules in them- Cookies 'n' Cream, Banana, Strawberry, Chocolate... If you don't mind about a 1/2 tsp of sugar, you might give it a try. My sons call them Magic Straws. It flavors the milk as they drink.

I bet you didnt count on all the responses stating cows milk is NOT a necessity! In fact it doesnt break down well at ALL in our system. Besides yogurt, my 1 yr old will not get cows milk at all. She LOVEs organic fortified rice milk though =) $2.69 for 64 oz at Trader Joes. $4.69 at the stores..
We are the ONLY animals that drink milk beyond infancy & of another animals at that!
Our daughters Naturopath doesn NOT recommend cows milk or soy (too many hormones)& dark leafy veges have a lot more calcium anyway.
Good luck & NOOO worries on the milk. We dont even have it in the house!

My husband and my son are both not milk drinkers!! My son is 6yo and drinks milk occasionally if it's chocolate milk. (Doesnt drink white milk that I've ever seen yet.) He is now more and more asking for milk in his cereal (still eats it dry more than he does with milk, but that's his option.) I just make sure he always has yogurt and/or OJ, spinach/other greens, cheese, and other things that have calcium each day.

I do wonder if all the problems we hear about milk indigestion and the "need" for alternate milks are due to our culture assuming babies/toddlers need to be drinking milk all day long. Do YOU drink milk all the time? Did people in the early days with a milk cow have their babies drink milk all the time? Even if they always drank milk, there were more people in the family to spread it around, so daily drinks of milk yes, but all the time? hardly.

Anyway, my husband does not like milk, and as an adult he understands that milk bothers his stomach. So he only puts enough milk to wet his cereal. Sometime drinks chocolate milk with lactaid tablets. All other dairy is fine for him, just not milk. I never cared for milk growing up, but dont have a problem with it. I always opted for my burgers without cheese, etc.

So when my son would NOT drink milk, it was disappointing, but not surprising, to me and I had to rearrange my way of thinking to making sure he was getting his calcium and Vit D without the shortcut of relying on milk. I will not push a food category on a child (ie, fish which also causes stomach upsets in my husband, peanut butter/nuts which my son only started to like/willingly eat at 5-6yo, and of course milk) because I feel that overdoing a food when a person is naturally resistant to it may cause an allergy or other reaction. Give them tastes, yes. But making them eat it everyday, no.

Sorry so long. Short answer: flavor it, and dont necessarily expect him to be drinking it everytime he needs drink. Water is more essential to our bodies - we cannot live without water but we can thrive without milk.

Some reading this will think me the worst mother in the world, but here it is. The answer to your trouble is this: Hershey's Syrup. My kids (almost 5 and 2 year old twins) all got to the point where they were simply refusing to drink milk. A little squirt of Hershey's Syrup and they will drink it by the gallon. It's a bit of sugar, but I've decided I'll make that trade-off because I need them to get the vitamin D and calcium from the milk. Good luck!

Hi J..

My son NEVER drank milk. It drove me crazy because I believe that milk is soo good for little ones. My daughter wasn't all that thrilled with it either. So I started putting strawberry syrup in it. Not a lot, just enough to give the milk a little pick me up. My children do not drink soda and rarely have juice (b-day parties) so the syrup doesn't bother me. I agree that the benefits from milk outweigh the "bad" of the syrup.
We have also started giving her less and less syrup and she still drinks her milk. She loves it.

Hope you dont worry on this one to much. Kids can go without milk. Unless is actually unpasturized a lot of the "good" stuff in milk isnt as much as most people thing. As mentioned earlier to get your addtional calcium and vitamin D you may want to try some yogurts or cheese sticks. A good replacement if your son doesnt adjust to any of the other ideas it something like rice milk. It is rich in vitamins and has a different flavor that lots of people love.
Hope all works out. If you are still unsure on the whole benefits of milk thing it might be something you want to look into, how cows milk isnt really the best choice for us anyway. Ah just thought of this, goats milk is another route you may want to take and loaded with vitamins as well.

I guess you are talking about cow milk and not human milk. There are many cultures that do not use cow's milk and the kids grow up just fine. I sure would not be worrying about your child's health if he does not care for milk so much. There is just tons of information about this online...the downside of drinking milk. Cheese and yogurt are at least fermented...and may be more beneficial.
Sweetening milk with chocolate or other flavors just sounds like a lead into the bad American habit of sweet drinks with every meal. Milk..Juice...then soda. Soda companies just love American parents addiction to giving kids juice. Studies show it just feeds right into the habit of drinking soda with meals.
happy parenting!

There are better ways to get nutrition into a child than milk. Milk causes a mucus barrier to build up in the intestines and this doesn't allow nutrition to be absorbed by the body. As people age this barrier becomes hardened and then problems like obesity and other chronic illnesses can be difficult to overcome. Milk causes more digestive problems than its nutrients have benefits. If the child doesn't want it DON'T force it on him - find alternatives that he does like - and that like his body.

We had the same problem when our little guy was about that age. A lady at the Dairy Council of AZ told us to add chocolate or strawberry syrup to the milk. She told us that the benefits of the milk outweigh the sugar in the syrup. Now he loves it!

how come? if you're looking to gain calcium in his diet, more calcium is found in green leafy vegetables then in milk.

My pediatritian said it was ok to add some flavoring. I was told the milk would do more good than the harm the small amount of sugar would do. I chose to use strawberry to avoid the caffine but later found that my kids were sensitive to the red dye (it made them very hyper and emmotionally out of control). Just don't buy the already flavored milk as it has more sugar than actual milk. My kids really like Ovaltine which also adds extra vitamins. I'm sure there are those who would disagree but this is what I did to get my kids to drink milk and my pediatrician said it was ok.

When I was little I didn't like milk at all. My mom put food coloring (not red) into my milk and put it in a clear cup with a straw. For some reason just because it was a different color I would drink it...tasted the same as white milk but I guess the color was more appealing.
J. F.

I assume you mean milk? The way I did it was not allow them to drink anything that is sweeter (cow's milk is naturally a bit sweet). So if you limit it to milk and water a lot of times they'll prefer milk, but if you're comparing it to juice, no way! (It's better for kids to get their nutrients in real fruit anyway, not juice.) If he prefers water to milk all the time, then you're going to have to get that calcium and Vitamin D in another way (I suggest cheese sticks..) You can't actually Make them like it, but you CAN restrict options to make it a more appealing choice!