Plant Based Milk Switch UPDATE

So, as I mentioned earlier, my kids are transitioning  extremely well to the vegan diet, with the exception of milk.  They are used to the taste of cow's milk, and enjoy it in their cereal. 

When we first switched them to a mostly plant-based diet, we switched their milk cold turkey.  I bought a variety of plant-based milks, hoping to find one they liked.  While they voted on soymilk as their favourite, they still didn't like it very much.  (It was unsweetened).  My younger two were more open to plant-based milk, but my older two had difficulty, so I did not have success.  They wouldn't drink it, they complained, and just stopped having milk altogether.

After a few weeks, they begged me to buy them some cow's milk so they could have their cereal.  So I bought it for them.  They were happily eating cereal again, with the one problem of Q's tummy.  He gets stomach aches relatively soon after drinking milk or eating a lot of cheese (He's inherited that situation from me).

So I had an internal debate with myself.  I know the kids enjoy the taste of sweetened soy milk as they've had it at Grandma's before.  But I hate the idea of added sugar in their milk.  But I also don't want to buy Cow's milk anymore (especially after watching Dairy is Scary, 5 minute video on Youtube. Must watch if you haven't seen it. (Only 5 minutes! Not appropriate for kids).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcN7SGGoCNI

So my new plan is to allow them to have sweetened soy milk for now, then as they adjust to the taste, gradually dilute it with unsweetened soy milk, until they are used to the unsweetened taste.  Let's see how it goes!  I justified it to myself with the fact that compared to most kids, my kids don't eat a lot of refined sugar.  They don't drink pop or eat processed cookies, etc.  So maybe some sugar in their soy milk for a temporary time period won't be so bad???  (I still struggle with this a bit) I will continue to eat unsweetened plant based milk- my current fav is Oat Milk. :)  Hopefully they'll adjust to unsweetened plant based milk eventually!

UPDATE:  Kids enjoy the sweetened soy milk.  They think it tastes similar to cow's milk, and have no problems with it.  I tasted it too and it's actually not very sweet.  I quite enjoyed the mild flavour as well.