I have been a skim milk person for as long as I can remember. Sometime, when I was a kid, they came out with the skim milk and my mom started buying it (it was after she gave up raising her own milk cows and went back to work outside the home). I loved how cold it got in the fridge and I became quite attached to skim milk. When out and about I could settle for 1% but never really questioned my preference. My own children have been raised on skim milk–but recently, the ravenous teenagers have started to riot–they are insisting on 2%!
I suppose I should be grateful that it isn’t whole milk they are insisting upon–but still it seems like just another opportunity for betrayal and rebellion to me. When they do the shopping, it is 2% that comes home and they’ve even taken to writing “2%” in bold, underlined script next to milk on the family grocery list. I’m not sure where it came from or how it is that all three of them are in cahoots together–but we have gone from being a skim milk household to a 2% milk household, without my being able to stop it.
I’m trying to take it all in stride. After all, teenagers need to assert their independence and preferences and I really do subscribe to the “pick your battles” modality of parenting. Still, I don’t know where I failed. I don’t know how it is that I have failed to pass on a preference for the healthy, delicious, gets-colder-in-the-fridge skim milk. I suppose each generation has to find their own way. We parents get so many lessons in watching our children choose different paths than we had chosen for them. Perhaps just to prove my detachment, it’s time I switched to soy milk after all?
Also: Coping With a Health Food Kick
Setting Good Health Examples For Our Kids