My Wife Wants to Put a Draconian Restriction on Our Kids’ Diets. This Is Madness.

Care and Feeding Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Getty Images Plus. Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here. Dear Care and Feeding, My wife “Marianna” and I have two kids who are 6 and 8, and she’s just made a ridiculous decision about their diets. She has decided that from now on the only thing the will be allowed to drink will be water, because she believes it will be healthier for them. No juice, milk, or soda—just plain water. As you can imagine, this has NOT gone over well with the kids, and I think it’s just ridiculous. The kids are miserable about it and constantly begging for juice and milk. I should note that my wife only drinks water herself. What can I do to get Marianna to stop being a hardass and make her realize that having young kids drink only water is not a reasonable expectation? —H2-Oh-No Dear Oh No, Sorry bud, you won’t get much love from me on this one. I don’t think it’s ridiculous for Marianna to think that the kids will be healthier without juice, soda, and (to a lesser extent) milk. I’m not a nutritionist, but I’ve parented in a near water-only house for 13 years and can tell you that juice and soda are trash and milk is fine to ditch as long as they’re still getting calcium from other sources, vitamin D from the sun, and vitamin A from orange stuff (carrots, cantaloupe). Marianna has made some errors here, though. One was not getting you on board first. You clearly want to keep giving your kids this stuff because you don’t care about their health and/or are too weak to resist when they start whining. You know soda and juice are bad for the kids. Stop calling her ridiculous and back it up. Second is that she’s trying to introduce this when the kids are already 6 and 8. If they’re already used to those sweet, sweet forbidden fluids, it’s an unreasonable expectation for them to quit without a fight. Don’t give up though. Work on explaining to the kids how unhealthy it is to make soda and juice a habit. But wait! There is an escape hatch here for you and the kids. Unfortunately, it might mean lowering Marianna’s expectations. It turns out that there is no true avoidance of these substances if your kids are set on getting them. Every birthday party will have soda or juice boxes. Cereal floats in milk. Unless they also believe it to be unhealthy, the kids are 100 percent going to still get to imbibe milk, juice, and soda. They just might not get it at home. If they start complaining at home, tell them to save those foods for what they are: a treat. —Greg More Parenting Advice From Slate My wife’s dad died when she was a baby. Growing up, my wife didn’t have much of a relationship with his side of the family for various petty reasons—her grandma was upset that her mom started dating “too soon” and didn’t mourn her son for a full year, and my wife’s mom wouldn’t let her get together with them at the holidays because she wanted her to be with her immediate family. After my wife got old enough to drive, the relationship with her grandma, aunts, uncles, and cousins on her dad’s side got much better because she didn’t need to rely on her mom to visit them. In the meantime, her mom remarried (the guy she had dated “too soon”) and had three more kids. Earlier this year, my wife’s paternal grandma passed away. We knew she would get her dad’s share of the estate, but we didn’t realize how much it would be. Never miss new Slate Advice columns Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays. Advice Family Kids