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Behaviour/development

Talk to others about child development and behaviour stages here. You can find more information on our development calendar.

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Original poster

Drinking juice/water...

12 replies

Bonnycat · 03/05/2009 07:45

My 17 month old refuses to drink anything but juice.
My friend suggested i offer only milk or water and eventually he will "crack" and drink it.Im tempted as obviously id prefer that for his health /teeth but the soft side of me says no.
Any advice? If you did this did it work?How long did it take?

OP posts:

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Picante · 03/05/2009 07:47

Dilute it as much as possible. Maybe offer it as a reward for drinking water first? Apparently it's better for their teeth if they use a straw - so the juice avoids the teeth.

Littlefish · 03/05/2009 07:48

Could you try gradually adding more and more water to the juice so that eventually there is no juice left in the water?

Juice should always be diluted anyway - I think the current advice is one part of juice to 10 parts of water, but that might have changed.

AlexanderPandasMum · 03/05/2009 08:03

Better to do it now than to wait until he is 2 and try to crack him, when he'll be more set in his ways in my opinion!

DS has only really had milk and water until he was about 15 months, and after that only occasional juice (a splash, in some water, when out for a meal or something). To be honest I don't tend to bother as if there's juice he will guzzle it very quickly and then I'll have to get him another drink!

If you do as your friend says, I think at 17 months he will not take long to get out of the habit of juice. I don't think he'll be as likely to realise what you are doing, whereas by the time he gets to 2 he will definitely kick off about it for longer!

fledtoscotland · 03/05/2009 11:21

i had this problem with DS1 and did a "cold turkey" with no juice for about 2 weeks - only water or milk. he soon learnt to drink milk. now juice is only for meals and very very diluted (about 2-3mls in 100mls of water).

castlesintheair · 03/05/2009 11:24

DS (7) will only drink diluted apple juice because I didn't 'break' him early enough so I'd do it now before he get's really stubborn and opinionated I only let my 2 year old drink milk or water.

castlesintheair · 03/05/2009 11:25

Sorry, seem to be having terrible grammar/spelling problems today

OonaghBhuna · 03/05/2009 12:31

My Dd almost 4 drinks milk and juice. So I buy fresh fruit juice made form 100% fruit no concentrate stuff. I mix half juice and half water, at least this way it is healthy and doesnt contain anything untoward.She doesnt get anything else sweet really so I am not too worried about it.

ThingOne · 03/05/2009 13:22

I would be very firm on this. Sugary drinks are bad for teeth, especially if they drink them outside of meals. My DS2 is only allowed juice with meals, and diluted at a variety of strengths depending on pouring accuracy of parent. He has a (decent, all fruit) smoothie for breakfast, and diluted apple juice (or water) at lunch and tea. The rest of the time he has water no matter how much he complains. He doesn't often have milk other than in his cereal so I let him have that when he asks, but it's usually for morning snack, so just one attack on the teeth.

Whether it comes from concentrate or not it still rots their teeth the same, Oonagh!

I'm not a complete ogre and do allow him squash at toddler group or parties, although he was well over two before he discovered the squash at toddlers. Evil mum .

norktasticninja · 03/05/2009 13:37

DD really wasn't keen on drinking anything apart from BM, for a while she really wasn't getting enough fluids. So, when she was 10 months (ish) I cracked and started offering her juice. Once she was finally drinking enough I watered down the juice more and more until it was just water, I think I did it over the space of about two weeks.

With cows milk I had to do it the other way around. I started off by watering it right down and then slowly increasing the proportion of milk.

It was a right faf TBH but now (17 months) she's perfectly happy with just water or milk. I do still give her fruit juice once a day though, usually with breakfast.

norktasticninja · 03/05/2009 13:38

Ooops, sounds like I started off giving her neat juice, I didn't

OonaghBhuna · 05/05/2009 23:18

Thing One- DD has had her teeth checked regularly by my friend who is a dentist, she has really healthy teeth.I actually think that encouraging children to clean their teeth properly is more important than how much juice they are getting.
Milk is really important for young girls so I have no issues with the amount of milk she drinks either.

ilovesprouts · 06/05/2009 16:44

my little boy will only drink juice so i make it very weak

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