Milk and a nearly 2 year old - can't remember rules....

[welshmum]

Ds is 2 on Thursday and he isn't keen on milk at all. He'll have it on cereal in the morning and that's it. He has yogs aplenty and cheese. Is that enough?
I'm about to switch to semi-skimmed too.
Am I right in thinking it's the calcium then need and not the fat by 2?
If someone kind could remind me I'd be ever so grateful....

Any thoughts?

i dont know the rules but my ds is just 2 and doesnt drink much milk either, he has lots of cheese and yoghurts.
I get confused about switching from full fat to semi-skimmed so hopefully someone will be along to enlighten us both.

My dd is 3 and rarely drinks milk, even as a baby she would never drink formula- she just doesn't seem to like the taste. She'll have it on cereal and in sauces etc, also loves yogurts so I don't worry about it. I suppose ideally she'd drink more of it but she has a healthy balanced diet otherwise so I worry about other things instead!
(I've been using semi-skimmed for ages too)

I think the 'rule' is you can switch to semi skimmed at 2 for the reason that you give wm. Saying that my 2dds (5 and 3) still have full fat milk because they prefer it.

I am not an expert (except my ds doesn't like milk much either).

I am still giving my two full fat, I believe it should be full fat till 5, then semi, but semi shouldn't be introduced before 2 - does that make sense.

My two do eat cheese & yoghurt, so he should be getting most of his daily requirement from that. Also what my two have as a bedtime drink is 'pink milk' or 'chocolate milk'.

I KNOW just milk is better, but IMHO flavoured milk is better than no milk. My two use the syrup which I then add milk to. I have no idea if this is better or not than the ready mixed stuff, but otherwise the ready mixde stuff would go off before it was finished.

Just checking I'm remembering correctly myself ... yup, from eatwell.gov.uk:

"Children should drink whole milk until they are at least two years old because they may not get as many calories as they need from semi-skimmed milk.

After the age of two, children can gradually move to semi-skimmed milk as a main drink, as long as they are eating well and getting plenty of calories and nutrients from a varied diet.

Don't give skimmed milk to children until they're at least five years old because it's too low in calories and contains only very small amounts of vitamins A and D, which children need.

Children between the ages of one and three need to have about 350mg of calcium a day. About 300ml full-fat milk (three fifths of a pint) would provide this."

Same here on the pink or chocolate milk Debbiethemum. That Lola has a lot to answer for. ;)

Thanks all, much appreciated. I've started checking more rigorously what's providing him with calcium as he's not fond of plain milk as a drink. I think some fruit juice is fortified with calcium so I might look for that.

I thought it was full fat till 5yrs old, could be wrong, my dd sees a dietician and she told me that they need (I think) a pint of milk a day which could be yoghurts cheese cream etc, I was also told when switching from formula to full fat milk that they need vitamin drops not that my dd is keen on taking it