My 3YO has hardly any dairy nowadays - ideas to increase or is it not that important?

[LadyBiscuit]

After he dropped milk in the night when he was about 2 1/2, he has continued to drink a cup of milk before bed and a bowl cereal in the morning but now he's ditched those too.

Some days I don't think he has any dairy at all (he doesn't like cheese very much either).

Should I stop giving him toast (or give him philly on it which he will eat) and a yoghurt at every meal? Or is it really nothing to worry about?

Calcium supplements?

If weight is fine and rest of diet is balanced, then that's the only thing that dairy really provides that can be hard (not impossible) to get elsewhere.

(dd allergic to dairy, so know a little bit, not much, about this!)

His weight is fine and he eats lots of fruit and brown bread etc. It's just the lack of dairy. He used to be such a milk monster I thought I'd never prise the bottle out of his hand and now he doesn't even touch the cup of milk! Children are so weird sometimes

Sorry, meant to say, thank you, that's a good idea. I had no idea you could get them.

Neither did I, but I saw some kiddy vitamins with calcium the other day in boots. Or I guess the gp could prescribe some.

You could give chocolate milk / yogurt smoothies etc etc, but to be honest, why bother with the extra faff if he really doesn't like it at the moment and he has no other food problems/issues? I always reckon eating should be as low stress as possible, there's plenty of other things to worry about!

Ps if you don't want to go down the supplement route, there's plenty of food that provides calcium eg here

I wouldn't go down the supplement route. My DC don't really like dairy. Processed bread has quite a bit of calcium in it and so does salmon. The tricks that work for my 3.5 year old is - yeo valley strawberry yoghurt ice-cream (you could make your own), squashams (little strawberry/raspberry plastic containers that they can squeeze in), yoghurt in tubes, cream cheese sandwiches, cheese sauce (although neither that keen), creme caramel. Cheese on pizza. DS will eat rice pudding, DD thinks its the food of the devil like my DH.

They only need 2-3 portions of dairy a day, calcium deficiency is very rare in children. I've raised it with GPs and HVs and none of them are concerned.

Thanks for the ideas and list of foods. He was obviously listening as today he ate two bowls of cereal, two frubes and two muller corners! So I don't think he's going to fade away through lack of calcium

I think I'm going to try going back to toast as a weekend treatthen I least I know he's having milk on cereal in the morning (I work FT so don't give him lunch or dinner 5 days out of 7)

Now it's summer he might like ice creams - my DS loves choc ices (the value brand ones have such a thin layer of chocolate on them that I don't worry about the sugar content), or mini milks, or you could freeze your own yoghurt smoothies.

He won't eat ice cream (it's too cold). I hated it as a child too

Yes yes, just reminded me of the first time I gave dd1 soya ice cream. I bigged it up as a special treat (and was quite excited to be actually giving her (fake) ice cream). She took one spoonful, opened her mouth and spat it out, and looked at me like I was completely mental for suggesting this might be something you eat by choice! Since then her love of processed sugary crap has overcome her dislike of the cold though.

Glad you have a low stress solution!