How to get a toddler to drink more milk?

[HensMum]

Sorry, this has probably been done a million times before, but has anyone got any suggestions of how to get a toddler to drink milk from a cup?

DS is 18 months and up until recently had a bottle of milk morning and night. This, combined with milk on cereal, yoghurt etc, added up to about a pint a day so I was happy he was getting all he needed, even though most of it was still from a bottle.

However, he's been drinking less and less milk over the past few days and last night and this morning refused to have any at all. I'd be fine with him dropping the bottles if I could get a bit more milk down him during the day but he refuses to drink milk from a cup. He has water from a Tommee Tippee cup, and has just starting having watered down juice in his Doidy cup. I've tried getting him to drink anything out of lots of other cups but he won't.

He'll drink milk from a sippy cup at nursery at snacktime and tea time when all the other kids do but that's only 3 days a week.

What can I do? Or should I even be worrying about it anyway? How much milk does an 18 month old need?

My DD had a similar phase - I put a drop of food colouring (pink for us!) in the pink to change the colour but not the taste. She fell into thinking it was a totally different drink and would drink it happily.

Now she'll drink anything out of a cup (is 2.7yo)

they dont need that much milk at all now - 350mls worth from the age of 1. That can be made up from milk in cereal, in foods and any other dairy products he has.

milk isn't necessary at this age 1 bottle would be fine as calcium and proteins would come from other foods yogurts ,meat, fish , cheese, fortified orange juice,

Oh that's good. He probably has about a third of a pint of milk on his cereal, plus a serving of yoghurt plus some cheese every day.

I might try him with blue milk though, just to see his reaction

Just another wee suggestion, I wizz up a smoothie of banana, milk and a tiny bit of honey for my dd every morning. She has a special cup that has a straw and we sing a milkshake song. We also shake our heads like crazy people when the blenders on and sometimes she'll do a little dance too.

I know we sound insane but it's fun and healthy.