Toddlers Forum - milk for toddlers

Definitely keep your daughter away from soy. It can only harm her.
I could go on and on about the dangers of soy, but there are enough studies against it now, the information is out there for anyone concerned.
I found out too late about the danger with soy infant formula. I switched my son to soy because he was so fussy and agitated on cow's milk formula, and I was having trouble expressing enough breast milk. Amazingly, he did fine on the soy formula, no vomiting or other overt signs of a problem.

The problems started around the age of two years, with constipation, aggressive behavior, rashes. At age three, defiant refusal to potty train, bedwetting, and frequent out-of-the-blue meltdowns. At this point he was off formula but drinking soymilk, because he liked it and I thought it was good for him. He also loved soy bacon, soy burgers and tofurky. We had become a soy eatin' family, thinking we had made a healthy choice. Ha, ha, ha.

At age four, his behavior was so bad that I took a parenting class for difficult children. I was shocked to see how many moms and dads were in this class because their children had diagnosed developmental disorders. I began to wonder if my son had Oppositional Defiant Disorder, a diagnosis I learned about in the class. (Can you believe "they" actually came up with this, as a definable disorder?)
But my son was highly intelligent, often affectionate, and very eloquent for a four year old.

At five he started kindergarten, and to my amazement was considered a "model" child; very obedient, considerate of others, a willing and articulate student!
But I soon realized something was wrong. He disliked school. Said he was "bored", and was wetting himself (and wetting the bed at night, still.)

I discovered that school was actually extremely stressful for him, but out of a desire to "be good", and not get into any trouble (they lay on the consequences of "poor choices" early in the first weeks of every school year), he was holding in a lot of feelings at school, and letting them loose bigtime! when he came home.
I knew it had to be more than just a discipline issue though, because a problem with sensory issues was growing more pronounced.
A hatred of haircuts, discomfort with his clothes and his environment, not wanting to travel in the car, and a very short fuse whenever he felt someone had wronged him. I learned about Sensory Integration Disorders by the time he was six years old, and knew this was the problem, but I kept asking myself why? I found no reasonable answer until, at the age of eight a stressful situation at school led to a cascade of symptoms that frightened me into more action. I took him to doctor after doctor, getting no relief from the symptoms; light sensitivity, fatigue, gastrointestinal problems,etc. I suspected a food allergy and took him to a chiro/nutritionist who did saliva testing and even hair analysis.

And there it was. Extreme soy allergy! We were still consuming a lot of soy at this time (in all of its various forms). The hair analysis revealed severe adrenal stress! I took my son off of all soy, and stopped eating it myself, although my husband kept buying soy products and eating them.

But it was too late. The damage had been done. Despite nutritional supplements and soy abstainance, he continued to suffer with more and more significant symptoms, but since his GP had no more advice, I made an appointment with an endocrinologist myself. I had heard the California Public Safety Hearing on TV in November of 2004, warning of the dangers of soy infant formula. Endocrine disruption, manganese toxicity, etc. I didn't want to believe it. How could they sell this stuff for babies, knowing it could be so harmful?

My son's endocrine tests revealed low growth hormone, (he stopped growing at the age of nine), low thyroid function, (something soy is notorious for), low adrenal hormone function and high prolactin levels. I read on the internet these results could indicate a pituitary tumor, and sure enough , the endocrinologist ordered a brain MRI. I remembered reading in 2005 that the pituitary gland was a target for excess manganese in the body, and that the soy phytoestrogens could lead to pituitary insufficiency.

It was worse than that. My son has a pituitary tumor, a large one, growing toward his optic nerves, and suppressing anterior pituitary function.

When I told the endo and the neurosurgeon I spoke with about the soy infant formula, the response was "don't believe everything you read on the internet. Pituitary tumors aren't that uncommon"! They don't believe soy caused the tumor or the endocrine disruption, but then what did? They have no answer other than he was probably born with it. Yet I have found research studies where scientists have INDUCED pituitary tumors deliberately in rats using ESTROGEN for the purpose of study, and it is well known among scientists that estrogen does this!

Sorry, I went on and on anyway, didn't I? You can read more in the book, The Whole Soy Story by Kaayla T. Daniel, PhD, CCN. You can get it from Amazon.com This book has been attacked by many soy lovers, but remember, I was once one of those soy lovers. I am also an educated, logical thinking person, not a hot-headed radical, and I have done much research myself, because of my son's illness. Everyone should become aware of the health hazards of soy, and ignore the "evidence" that it is a healthy food. Soy infant formula needs to be taken off the market. If anything, soy has a future as a powerful drug, so the drug companies and soy manufacturers can still be happy.

I just found out the organic turkey I finally talked my son into eating, is soy-fed turkey. Oh well, there's just no winning sometimes.

Take good care of that beautiful daughter of yours. And tell your husband....well no, get the book. The dangers are too numerous to easily and quickly verbalize.
Case in point!

Honeycomb