Traditional Chinese Medicine Parenting: Question 6 – How long should a child drink milk?

Traditional Chinese Medicine Parenting: Question 6 – How long should a child drink milk?

Answer: In TCM, foods are categorized based on their properties: cold, hot, warm, cool, and neutral. Milk is considered a relatively cold food. During infancy, children grow rapidly and are considered to have a "pure yang" constitution, meaning they have enough yang energy to counteract the coldness of milk and convert it into the energy their bodies need. If a mother's breast milk is insufficient, supplementing with milk is acceptable for an infant. In nature, only calves drink milk, and once they grow up, they switch to eating grass. Thus, milk is only suitable for animals in their infancy.

In the Huangdi Neijing, it is mentioned that different regions in China have diets suited to the people living there. Milk is suitable for those living in cold, high-altitude regions like Mongolia and the grasslands, where the body needs and can transform the coldness of milk into energy. However, people living in central, eastern, western, and southern China are not suited to drinking milk.

When a child starts to grow teeth, it indicates that their body is ready to begin chewing, and complementary foods should gradually be introduced. The best complementary foods are grains. The Huangdi Neijing states: "Grains nourish, livestock benefits, vegetables fill, and fruits assist." Therefore, grains are the best for nourishing the body. 

Once a child's teeth are fully developed and they can chew food on their own, milk can be phased out. Consider how many children today are fed a breakfast of milk and a boiled egg, both of which are cold foods. By lunchtime, the child might burp, and you can still smell the milk and egg from breakfast, indicating that the child's spleen and stomach are not digesting these cold foods properly.