My Toddler Is on a Milk Strike.

My daughter (almost 20 months) did the saem thing. She would drink milk all day long (if we let her) out of a bottle but didn't want it in a sippy cup. She just now started drinking some milk out of a sippy cup (after about 1 - 1 1/2 months). I mix a little choc. milk in and she seems to like it now. She LOVES her cheese so we don't worry as much about it anymore. So been there, still working on it, but she soon started to realize the "ba ba" was gone and all she was getting was the "sippy"!

So I agree with some other moms, don't worry too much just offer other forms of calcium and don't give up just yet on the drinking milk thing. Hopefully soon, he'll come around! Good Luck!

What kind of milk have you been trying to feed him?

If it's the regular stuff from the store, then I would go on a milk strike, too!

My quick answer for this is to find him some real milk, if you haven't already. Simple go to http://realmilk.com/where1.html to (hopefully) find a farmer near you. Then take your kiddos to the farm and meet the farmers and the animals. It's fun for the whole family! You'll be able to see how clean the farm is and how well the animals are treated. See what types of milk they have. You may want to look into fresh goat's milk for your son, too. He may prefer the taste to that over cow's milk.

I know that some people might be scratching their heads over the advice I'm giving here, but once you start looking into the health benefits of fresh milk - and the health consequences as a result of pasteurized, processed, homogenized unfresh milk from the store, then you'll quickly see what I'm talking about! Also, you can NOT believe the difference in taste! Oh my goodness...fresh is always better!

~Best wishes!~

It's ok my daughter did the same thing. Just offer him yogurt and other alternatives. But please don't offer chocolate milk. If you do that he won't go back to white milk because he's getting milk even though it's junk milk. But if he doesn't get milk he will go back to it after a while. I found all kinds of alternatives though. Carnation instant breakfast has a vanilla version my daughter loves. Now that's she's older we drink that when we get it but she now drinks both very well and doesn't hardly drink chocolate very well at all...lol

Don't give him milk the human body contrary to multi billion dollar marketing campaigns does not need milk from cows to survive. In fact many people are intolerant or sensitive to cow milk and usually not the lactose also contrary to popular belief. I personally feel that when young children are given the opportunities of a balanced whole food diet they typically eat the foods that make them feel good. Actually dairy and gluten are usually the exception in that they will crave them because the intolerance in the body/brain actually metabolizes them into an opiate like substance. please check out groups.yahoo.com/group/foodlab/

my advice is to let his taste buds make the decision on this one. pick your battles! he can get all the nutrition he needs from yogurt, cheese and greens and there's no pressing need for him to drink milk. let him drink water and don't sweat it.
:) khairete
S.

first of all, nuby (newbie? i forget how to spell it... nubby??) makes cups that have a sippy spout extremely similar to bottle nipples... made the transition super easy for both my kids. if you havent already tried that, go buy one! second, this is temporary. this is your typical almost-two-year-old showing his power. dont give him any other options of anything to drink (except water, you cant just deny your child hydration)... but water is BORING to kids... so if he wants his milk (and he will!) he will drink it. just always have it ready in his cup for when he comes around! i'd be very surprised if you stick with the water and milk only thing, and he doesnt give in to milk in two or three days! good luck!!

Go back to the bottle. When my twins were around 2-ish, we weened them off the bottle (milk was the only thing they were still drinking from a bottle). For one, he switched to a sippie with milk with no problem. The other flatly refused to drink milk out of a cup of any kind. We tried strawberry flavor, chocolate, the milk 'juice' boxes, anything but he refused. He is now 6 1/2 and still won't drink milk at all (even his cereal he eats dry!). I wish I had taken more time and let him keep the bottle for a while and tell him that he gets 1 bottle of milk and 1 sippie of milk a day or something like that. I think the stoppage just pissed him off and he decided to make a stand :-) Anyway, you may want to reinstate the bottle for a bit longer and take more time in switching the milk from the bottle to the cup and see if that helps. I mean, there is no medical reason he needs to be taken off the bottle at least for a little while longer to maybe give you a chance to get him to drink milk from a cup. I did actually try going back to the bottle, but that was when they were around 4 and I bought a couple bottles and tried to entice him that way - it was too late, he was set and wasn't going to change by then.
My guys eat tons of yogurt and cheese and I get calcium fortified cereal/margarine, and whatever else I can find. The doc says he's fine but I do wish he'd drink milk.

Good luck

Hi D.! I hope you have better luck than I did. Embarrassingly, my daughter drank milk from a bottle until she was almost 3, but only b/c every time I tried to put it in a cup she refused to drink it. So it finally got to a point where the bottle had to go, so I took it from her cold turkey. She is now 5 1/2 and hasn't had ONE drop of milk since. She absolutely refuses. I've talked to the doctor about this several times and she says to keep giving her yogurt, cheese, etc. We might need to talk about a supplement when she is a little older, but for now the doc believes she can get all her calcium needs through food. Anyway, maybe your son will be less stubborn, but if not just buy lots of calcium rich foods!

I did away with the bottle at about 13 months because I was having a second baby. (They are 17 months apart.) My daughter will not drink milk any longer. She gets it in other ways--yogurt, cheese, calcium fortified everything! Don't go back to the bottle--our doc and nurses both said that it would take a LONG time since the new baby was coming. Your child will be just fine whether the calcium and fat come from milk or another source!

My son always drank Soy anyway, but when we ditched the bottle- we went to a sippy cup or one of those 'big boy' sports cups/bottles. He's 6 now and rarely drinks milk/soy except once a week or so. He still will not drink it out of a regular glass, but has taken over my travel coffee mug- which is basically a sippy cup for adults.