How to Teach Kids to Drink More Water
Some children will happily drink water all day long, while others would rather cringe like raisins before giving up milk or juice and succumbing to moist, tasteless water, which is plain old water. When a child drinks juice, they tend to prefer juice (who wouldn’t?) – but even young children need to drink water regularly to stay hydrated and form long-term healthy habits.
One helpful strategy for increasing water intake comes from a listener to the One Bad Mother podcast who called to explain how she got her juice advocate kids to drink more H2O:
They sell all these adult water bottles with short lead times, a kind of guide for you to drink water. So, I took a Sharpie marker, drew some black lines on the water bottle and now I set goals for them – by the end of breakfast, you should have finished your first line. By lunchtime, you should be on the fourth line. And it has been working for a week now. I actually talked them into drinking two bottles of water a day.
She talks about these bottles, which give adults hourly goals and little notes to support the most jaded of us. But this idea will work for any water bottle, even a translucent one.
Instead of hourly goals, you can choose milestones during the day that are more appropriate for children, such as meal times, snack times, and bedtime. This breaks the task down into smaller, more manageable pieces, rather than pushing large portions towards them a couple of times a day, which can seem intimidating.
If you’re unsure how much water to aim for, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends:
- 6-12 months age: 4-8 oz. per day (0.5-1 glass per day)
- 12-24 months: 8-32 oz. per day (1-4 glasses per day)
- Age 2-5: 8-40 oz. per day (1-5 glasses per day)
This is in addition to breast milk, formula, whole milk or skim / skim milk that they also drink. And keep in mind that older kids and kids who are very active or play sports will need more.