My three year old son has recently become fixated on milk snakes. Although he’s obviously not old enough to actually own one himself, I am considering adding one to our household that would be ‘his’. The only milk snake I have owned is a black milk snake, who had a wonderful personality, but as far as I’m aware, black milks are kind of an outlier when it comes to typical milk snake personalities. So are any of the tricolor species typically chill enough that you’d allow a child to handle them (with help and supervision, obviously)?
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You are right kings and milks can be a little nippy, especially when young! I like Honduran, but that’s because they are decent sized milk snakes, same nippy attitude though! For you and your big boy, I would suggest a Nelson’s milk they are usually very tame, and albinos are some of the prettiest still in my opinion.
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One of my former colleagues had a sweetheart Nelson’s who visited his classroom from time to time. S/he (can’t remember snake’s gender) was handled by students from time to time. I know he took that specific snake to some of the larger scale outreach events, too, but I’m not sure if it got handled in those settings.
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Definitely Honduran. I have a good relationship with a small local reptile zoo and they’ll let me come by and handle some of their reptiles occasionally, and the Hondurans there are great for handling.
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Our first family pet was a Sinaloan, whom I got when my son was 3. She** was incredibly calm, yet active and curious. I let him handle her when he was 5. I’m the one who had to assure my son that he wouldn’t hurt her. 
We encountered a little baby milksnake in the wilds of Costa Rica when he was 7. She** was picked up & wrapped herself around his wrist, chill as a cucumber. As handleable as could be & it was warm out, so this was more a temperament thing, not a temperature thing.
Both of these accounts are anecdotal & I cannot speak to what the greater tendencies of the different types may be.
**Sex is unknown, I feminize them as a default.
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