My children have officially entered a picky phase. But their version of pickiness is so bizarre and selective: they will happily put whatever slimy/raw/completely insane piece of food I offer them – oysters, grilled octopus tentacles, salmon roe, you name it – directly into their mouths (PLEASE look at the pics at the bottom of this post, because omgggg), but drink a glass of milk?
Abso-freaking-lutely NOT.
My son won’t drink milk at all. Like, not a single drop of the stuff has touched his lips since the day he gave up drinking from a bottle. My daughter will drink it, but only if it is on top of cereal, and in a bowl that either my husband or myself are at that moment trying to eat from, because when she sees us eating something she realizes that she must eat it herself RIGHT NOW.
They both eat yogurt and cheese, so it’s not like they’re completely dairy-deficient, but still. I’d like them to have some milk in their diet, and to make the milk that I include as nutritious as possible. On our breakfast cereal, for example (you know, the cereal that will definitely be taken away from us by our daughter), we’ve taken to pouring fairlife SuperKids® 2% Milk: it’s got all the benefits of fairlife ultra-filtered milk (it has more protein and less sugar than regular milk, plus it’s lactose-free), plus 125mg of DHA Omega-3 – more than the leading brand of DHA Omega-3 milk. (I wasn’t sure exaaaactly what this meant, so I googled and found out that DHA Omega-3s are fatty acids that contribute significantly to brain health and development. Which sounds like a very good thing.)
And it’s delicious. I think so, anyway (and drink it myself all the time). I mean, my children wouldn’t drink a solo glass of it if their lives depended on it, so they’re unreliable witnesses.
If you have a picky milk-drinker of your own, I’m going to strongly suggest doing what we do, which is giving our kids “hot chocolate” (literally fairlife SuperKids® Chocolate Milk, warmed in the microwave for 20 or 30 seconds) every night. I’m not sure that it’s occurred to our son that this is, technically milk, but whatever: he asks for it all the time, and seeing as it has all the benefits mentioned above (protein! calcium! DHA Omega-3!) I am totally fine with that.
(I’m also fine with it because I cannot stop drinking it myself, and “my son loves it!” is a good excuse to keep a couple of bottles in our house at all times. I have said this at infinitum by now, but if you haven’t yet tried fairlife chocolate milk – either the regular ultra-filtered kind or the SuperKids kind – you are missing out, my friend. It is HEAVEN.)
And now, allow me to present: my children eating raw octopus. Yuuuup.
This post was created in partnership with fairlife. Mitz Accessories rainbow dress. Noritake bowls and mugs. Photos by Kim Ebbets.
