How much dairy does my 18 month old need?

[manchita]

What are the official guidelines?
I am really have trouble getting either of my children to drink fresh milk ( they were both breast fed and never had a bottle).
They are not too keen on cheese or yoghurts either.
I have resorted to giving my 4 yr old those nesquik straws as this is the only she will drink milk at all.
I am worried about giving these to my son and have not done so but I am getting really worried about this now.
Any advice?

My 16 month old hardly has any milk at all - only on his breakfast cereal in fact. He only drinks water in the day. He does love cheese though and has a yoghurt every day as well. Milk based sauces/soups are good, or rice pudding, semolina etc.

I should have said, someone once told me three servings of dairy a day so I tend to stick with that as a guideline.

I wouldn't give them that crap.
Like you I only breastfed and didn't do bottles.They never had milk after weaning (30 mths and 11 mths) aprat from incidentally in cheese and yoghurt and on cereal.

Cows' milk is hugely overrated.

My DD is the same. I don't know the guidelibnes, but lots of other foods contain decent amounts of calcium, e.g. bread, sardines, rhubarb and green veggies.

If you live in a hard water area, they'll get lots of calcium from that too.

They don't need any - you can get it from nuts, seeds, figs, leafy greens and if that is too bulky then fortified soya milk/rice milk/OJ. Cows milk is for baby cows

And in an 18mo child, they need around 500-600mg of calcium a day - the equivalent of 20z almonds, 50g spring greens/broccoli, 3 dried figs and 1 cup of fortified soymilk.
Ready break is really high in calcium too.

Thanks for the advice everyone, I will try to find other sources and bin the straws- i am not proud of them and my dd said they are too sweet.
My children to have healthy diets with lots of green leafy veg, fruit, lentils etc and they both love sardines so maybe serve those more frequently.
The reason I have panicked recently is a combination of varios relatives comments and finding some white marks under ds's nails- I always believed this was due to calcium deficiency- does anyone know?

Thats cobblers manchita, white marks under nails are caused by trauma while the nail is still under the skin , kids get them because they have such thin nails and bang them more often - My mum always thought it was lack of protein so used to give me jelly cubes (yum) made sod all difference but i wasn't complaining

I have an 19 month old who is not that keen on dairy she has one bottle of formula a day as she would never drink cows milk, but not much else, maybe occasional yoghurt. won't eat cheese, I give her tinned salmon mashed on brown bread which she likes so I guess she gets some good from that. I read in the Allen car book that dairy is not good for us in general and that after the age of 3 our bodies loose the ability to break down the lactose in milk! thought that was interesting.

Thought white marks were lack of zinc