Boy on a milk strike... any ideas to get bedtime milk back on the menu please?

[movingmumma]

Our one and a half year old has been ill for a while and is currently very fussy about food having been a pretty good eater before... he is also refusing bedtime milk and it's affecting his sleep.
Any ideas please to get him drinking milk before bed. Feeling frazzled and sleep deprived and not sure what to do.

Add Ovaltine.

was thinking chocolate... like his mother he is likely to be tempted. our only problem is that the mere mention or production of a beaker at bedtime makes him scream no - in a crazed you horrible parents kind of way. I shall have to learn to be more cunning. Do you keep going with Ovaltine and then lessen the amount or just decide that Ovaltine it will be every night?

DD did this and I added strawberry nesquick - just a teeny bit. It worked. It has sugar in but no nasty e numbers

sorry bonfirehater - just changed my MN name... just to confuse things. I am not Moving so it's a pretty silly name to have... Muslin is of course terribly sensible

I'm going to sound like a Stalinist bitch-mother here.....but what the heck......

Offer him a bottle of warm water....not quite to crying point, but offer away, till he gets the fact that that's what you're giving ...... either that night (if you're soft and weak willed, like me) or the next (if you're a Super Nanny type) offer the milk/ovaltine/hot chocolate/strawberry Nesquik variants

You will spend countless minutes of self doubt, feeling like the worst mummy in the world, but he might take his bottle at the end. - hopefully

ha your Stalinst bitch-mother bit made me chuckle a wee while... that sounds like a brilliant plan. Will start tomorrow as no choc in the house (apart fromt the important big chunky bars kind of course). Now I will just have to decide on the temptation of choice... thank you GuyFox too.

Muslin I subtly reduced the amounts of nesquik until there was virtually none in the milk

Forgive me for being very obtuse, but why do you want him to drink milk at bedtime so much? My ds (now quite big) went off milk a long long time ago, and now will only really drink milky tea, but unless it's for building him up (given his previous illness) then might it be worth thinking about alternative methods for inducing sleepiness? It just seems to me that if he is screaming at the idea it may not be a battle worth fighting. (You can tell me to get lost on this one, I just remember getting into lots of battles that in retrospect were not worth fighting when my two were little, and the amount of stress it caused).

OK, same situation with 11 month DS. How much ovaltine in how much milk please?

we got nestle's milk straws. They are fab bribery in our house. Mind you they are on goats milk which is pretty tasteless (white water?) so ya gotta do something ...

I also do hot chocolate. And yes, as earlier poster said, he has enough of motherly genes to adore the stuff.

I kind of think it bette to have a drink of milk each day with a wee bit of sugar than no mil t all IYKWIM. I like mine to drink ilk for he calcium. DD has just given up her evening milk - just turned 4. They don't always have cheese/yogurt other calcium sources each day

excuse typos

yep - for same reasons have been continusing with milk. I get your point Nooka and don't think you are being particularly obtuse. In fact you are spot on about not battling it... it just isn't worth the grief! What makes me want to push the milk is that if he doesn't have it, he keeps on waking up and me and DH are starting to feel too much like zombies (this is a reminder of those good old newborn days!) and need a full nights sleep again. The ovaltine is something we will try and we'll see what happens. Now I just have to remember to buy it! I told you I was sleep deprived. I currently have the memory of a goldfish

Oh a good night's sleep is worth a battle! Do you think he's waking up in the night because he's hungry? What about a snack instead? My ds wasn't tempted by any milk variants until he discovered tea quite recently. I used to shovel petit filous into him to boost his calcium intake.

ha Nooka, you make me chuckle Tell me about it. I was feeling a bit loopy coupled with a major dose of glum and couldn't work out why. Then I remembered I'm really bl**dy tired! Funny that, what with having not had a straight through night of sleep for about a month. We had Green and Blacks hot choc in the house (I confess we are a house with a G & B choc addiction) so I gave DS some of that. He got all frenzied again about having milk but then decided he rather liked it and slurped the lot. Brillilant!!! Now I shall just ever so slowly have to reduce the amount. But I am so happy - hurray!