4 Ideas To Get The Whole Family To Drink More Water

As a parent, you only want what’s best for your child. That’s why you encourage them to spend time outside, make them healthy meals and teach them how important exercise and fitness is.

However, the one thing many parents fail to teach their children is how vital it is to drink enough water. Many families fail to drink enough water, instead quenching their first with cordials, soda and other beverages.

As adults, our bodies are made up of 50 – 60% water, which is why it is crucial that you drink enough water each day. Otherwise, not only are you setting a bad example to your children (whose bodies are made up of 75 – 80% water), but you also aren’t giving your body what it needs.

Of course, water can get a little boring after a while, and it can sometimes be hard to get the kids to want to drink it. But, with the right ideas and mindset, it is easy to incorporate more water into your family’s diet.

To help you encourage your family to drink more water, we have put together four helpful ideas below:

1. Buy fun cups

For children, a big part of wanting to drink something, comes from the cup, it is in. It might sound silly but by simply putting water into a fun, novelty cup, you can encourage your child to drink it.

If you don’t have any fun cups at home, take your child to your local homeware store and let them pick two new, fun cups. Explain to them that these are their water cups and that they can pick one each day to drink their water from – you should be refilling these at least three times a day.

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2. Swap juice for homemade smoothies

You may not realise it, but most juice is full of sugar, high in calories and full of additives and flavourings. If a child has the choice between sweet, sugary juice and water, they are almost always going to pick juice, so it is crucial that you get rid of the juice. Instead of giving your child juice, wean them off it and swap them to homemade smoothies.

Admittedly, you may have a few breakdowns to start off with, but make sure that you persevere and stay strong. Juice rots teeth, has very low nutritional value and is full of the type of additives that turn kids hyper – not what you want your children drinking.

Smoothies are a fantastic way to get your children to drink more water without them knowing it. All you need to do is blend up a couple of handfuls or fruit with a handful of ice cubes, pop it in your child’s cup and voila.

3. Invest in a water filter

For older children, giving them the opportunity to get a drink of water as and when they want to, should encourage them to drink more throughout the day.

While a tap is fine for getting a drink of water, a water filtering machine is a lot more fun. If you want to encourage your children to enjoy drinking water, investing in a water filtering machine for your home is ideal.

All you need to do is buy the machine itself, some reusable plastic cups and water filters and your machine will be ready to use. To encourage the kids to use the machine, why not invest in some child-friendly cups?

4. Add fruit to water

Instead of adding cordial to water, add fresh fruit and herbs instead. It’s amazing how much extra flavour adding fruit and herbs to water can actually make.

Fill a jar with water, add slices of your child’s favourite fruit and pop in the fridge to chill. After a couple of hours, the water should then be full of flavour and ready to drink.