You Drank WHAT???

The other day, my daughter spent a couple of hours playing outside with a friend in the neighborhood. At one point, they went inside her friend's house for a bathroom break. Or, so I thought.

Let me interject a critical piece of background information here....

We have gone over and over the "food and drink" ground rules for visiting a friend's house. Real simple, it's something like this: "Sweetie, you will be offered food and drinks that we don't have at home. As long as you have filled up with health first (eaten clean protein, veggies, fruit and water), then you may try a bit of what is offered, if you choose. EXCEPT when it comes to drinks. ONLY water, unless you know for certain that it's organic 'real' juice, then you may have that. Absolutely no milk, pop, sports drinks or juice drinks."

When she came home from the friend's house, she told me that, while inside their home, she had eaten a few homemade cookies that her friend's mom had just made. OK. Not the healthiest choice, but totally understandable, I thought.

It wasn't until much later that night, in the bathtub actually, that my daughter 'slipped' and told me that she actually had at least 6 cookies!! OK, I can still understand. Afterall, they sounded like really yummy cookies! But, I did remind her that the more toxins you put in, the less health is created.

Then it occurred to me, all those cookies must have made her really thirsty. That's when she dropped the bomb!!

She had 2 or 3 glasses of MILK!!!!

YOU DRANK WHAT???

Oh my goodness... you would have thought she had just confessed to smoking pot with her friends!!! I couldn't believe she would put that stuff in her little body! I was horrified!!!

I'll make the very long version of this story much shorter...

We obviously had three issues:

1) we needed to review making healthy choices even when mommy and daddy aren't around;
2) we needed to have a frank conversation about MILK.

My daughter's eyes just about popped out of her little head when I told her that the milk she had chugged was loaded with drugs! (I had to get her attention!) We talked about the steroids, hormones and antibiotics it's loaded with.

I know she just about threw it up when she heard this!

3) finally, we needed to discuss the contradictory nature of "healthy" food. She was very confused (again) by other people in her life saying that milk is very healthy for her (her friends, other parents, teachers, etc.) and that having cookies, cake and other sweets really isn't so bad.

She looked at me, wondering why her father and I are the only two grown-ups on the planet that disagree! I told her that, unfortunately for her, this was something she'd have to get used to! I told her she could choose whatever she wanted to when she is a grown-up... but for now, it's MY responsibility to protect and enhance her health. Period.

I am absolutely certain that this is only the beginning of our healthy choice journey with our kids! I'm sure we'll be re-visiting this quite often!

Poor kid. I think she's rather have parents that own a candy store!