Chocolate Formula

When my children where young, I said I would never do a lot of things.  Guess what, I have done a lot of them.  You do what you have to do in the situation you are in... until you have walked a mile in that mother's shoes, don't judge!




Chocolate formula seems to be burning up the blogosphere.  Mothers are out-raged that the corporate machine is making out kids fatter.  I would like to point out that the corporate machine does not force the kids to eat chocolate formula, parents do... but I digress.


When my middle child was young he was very ill, we did what ever we could to get him to eat.  I am sure if this formula was available and dairy free, we would have tried it just to get nutrition into him.  To this day, the kid is still a picky eater.  My other two eat everything, but not him.  So clearly it isn't my parenting that caused this, it is a combination of his personality and life circumstances.

While adding more processed foods to a toddlers diet is not optimal, there are times and places for many things.  My pediatrician told me one time, when my middle one was very dehydrated, "I don't care if you are giving him a beer as long as he is drinking something."  This was in response to my telling him I was giving him frozen pedialyte rather than jello as directed.  Now, I don't think my pediatrician wanted me to give my child a beer, but, well, you get the point.

Not one of my kids made the switch from breast milk to cows milk without adding something to the cows milk.  I think cows milk is more bitter than breast milk.  Interestingly, only the middle one liked chocolate, the others all liked strawberry.  For the most part, only Sammy drinks chocolate milk, but keep in mind he doesn't really drink milk... it is soy, plain soy is all kinds of nasty.

Should you give your kids more sugar?  Probably not.  Should you judge other moms for doing that?  Probably not.