Does your child drink water? Does your child drink enough water?
After I wrote this post last week, many of you emailed me to ask me what you can do to help your child drink more water. It seems that this is one of the problems that parents struggle with the most when it comes to helping a child achieve regular bowel movements. I wrote here 7 tips to encourage children to drink more water, but you wanted more. Sometimes one tip works for a while, but then stops working and you have to try another one.
8 tips to help your child drink water:
1. Add ice cubes to their water. My son loves ice cubes in his water. When the water is refreshingly cold, he drinks his whole glass happily.
2. Avoid giving children sweet drinks on a regular basis as it will make them less likely to drink water. They get used to the sweetness and won’t appreciate the clear, clean taste of water anymore.
3. Be their role model. Each time you drink water say loudly “Hmmm, water is sooo good”. When your kids see you enjoy drinking water, they will be more likely to model your behaviour.
4. Find fun glass or stainless steel cups or bottles that they can drink from. My kids love to drink from a new cup. It doesn’t have to be necessarily new, but if they didn’t see it in a while, it counts as new 🙂 (or at least as interesting enough to drink from).
5. Put their cup or bottle where they can reach it. Each of my kids has at least 3 water bottles that I refill every day and that are within their reach throughout the house.
6. Add slices of fruits or vegetables (strawberries, cucumber, etc.) to their water, or squeeze some orange or lemon juice in their water.
7. Serve fruits rich in water (such as watermelon, strawberries, cantaloupe) and vegetables with a high water content (such as cucumber, lettuce, celery, radishes, tomatoes, zucchini).
Here are my top 20 fruits and vegetables that help our children poop (with a bonus).
8. Offer soups, stews, and smoothies on a daily basis as they too count as liquid intake.
Have you tried any of the tips above? Is there one that works well for your child?
Source of nutritional information: www.whfoods.com
Number 1 and 4 work for sure for my kids, and I am looking forward to trying #6 – I personally like to add a slice of lemon to my water, why not try that for the kids as well? Thanks for the great tips.
I understand what you mean. I also like to put slices of lemon in my water and sometimes I forget to offer it to my kids as it seems such an adult thing to do. My daughter loves “lemony” water and my son takes few sips and he is done :).
Lemon water is great but remember to have them brush their teeth more since the citric acid affects tooth enamel.