One Way to Get Your Child to Drink Milk at Lunch
This article is about getting your child to drink their milk at lunch without threatening them.
When I was in the second grade it was in the mid-1950s. Everyone took their lunch until a lady opened a small snack shop across the street when we were in the sixth grade.
We all took our lunch in a lunch bucket. It also contained a thermos for our drink. Of course the lunch buckets might be Superman or Batman or, if you were a girl, Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella or Pollyanna.
Kids wanted to drink Kool-aid or juice or soda. Parents wanted them to drink milk. Most parents failed. One mother did not. Not only did she get her son to drink milk but she had every kid in my second-grade class begging their mom to make milk the same way she did.
Everyday at lunch our buddy opened his lunch and his thermos of milk. All of us would leave our seats and gather around to see what color his milk was that day! That’s right his mother put food coloring in the milk. One day it would be blue; one day his milk would be green; one day his milk would be brown or orange or yellow well, you get the drift. Further his mother didn’t repeat colors for about a month. Don’t ask me how she did it.
Fast forward a couple of generations and I have children of my own. While schools now offer lunches, my son needs calcium and won’t drink milk. He wouldn’t even drink chocolate milk.
The way that it works is that some parents send supplementary food and/or drink to school along with the food the school dishes out.
What I started doing was coloring our son’s milk. Of course a lot has been learned since the mid-1950s. Yellow coloring may have Yellow Dye #5 which can affect people that have an allergy to aspirin. Further red dye has been thought to be a possible carcinogen but that is far from proved by FDA testing. Also there are natural dyes.
Image via Wikipedia
What happened with my son was that he enjoyed having colored milk and it got him in the habit of drinking milk. He felt so much stronger that he ultimately was weaned from the concept of needing colored milk.
He also got a lot of attention from other students because they thought it was such a novel idea. Well it was about 45 years old. It just goes to show you that our parents were pretty resourceful. The best part of the situation was I didn’t have to get heavy-handed with him.
In fact in looking back over my childhood my parents rarely went head to head with us, they found alternatives and made us “think” we were getting our way.
Hopefully you can use this concept if your child won’t drink milk but needs to get some.
Parents need to stick together.
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Atikin | Sep 5, 2009 | Reply
Haha, my mum and dad still bug me to drink milk twice a day (I know it is sad when you are 17!) but you know health is wealth and everyone needs their Vit D and Calcium. Colouring is actually a really good idea but parents like mine would be worried about the side effects of colouring. But colouring, if it works, seems a good way to get children to drink. My mum flavoured my milk. I had chocolate, strawberry or banana. Never liked the banana and strawberry as a child but even now, twice a day, I drink chocolate flavoured milk. It’s unhealthy but atleast I get a glass full of milk anyway. Good article for parents who may make their children suicidal over drinking milk!
KTP | Sep 5, 2009 | Reply
I really don’t get the big effort to get kids to drink milk. Milk does not do a body good, and we’re not meant to drink cows milk. And on top, dress it up with coloring and sugar? Give me a break. GIve them ricemilk, soy or perhaps goatsmilk atleast. There is a reason half the population is lactose intolerant. My daughter had constant constipation, and rashes. I gave up cowsmilk, switched to rice and soymilk, and her bowl movements are now normal, and regular.