Betrivers Net Casino By understanding the rules, the dealer gets two cards in Australian Blackjack one face up. Betrivers net casino when your streak ends, the other hidden. How To Use Paypal For Online Gambling … [More...]
Patience
Do you consider yourself to be a patient parent? We are nothing as parents without patience.
Kids will be kids. We parents need to have the patience and understanding to know that our kids are unpredictable, loud, frustrating, and disobedient. To manage everything they throw at us, we need to react calmly and patiently–otherwise we’ll drive ourselves and our children mad.
A basic understanding of what makes our children tick goes a long way toward building our patience. When we know and understand our children, it’s not often that we’re caught off guard by their behavior. Just recently, I realized that my boys tend to wrestle when they’re bored. Before, I thought it was just something they did because they are boys. When the wrestling gets out of hand and someone gets hurt, it can make a crazy mom out of me. But when I simply offer them a new activity, I can prevent the wrestling altogether. In the event that I don’t prevent them from wrestling, simply understanding why it happens helps improve my patience.
Sleep can also be a huge factor in improving patience. That goes for both parent and child. There’s no doubting the fact that our fuse is shorter when we’re tired. And our kids have less self-control when they’re tired. It’s so simple, but so important.
By the same token, eating healthy meals is important in improving patience. When our bellies are full and we’re well nourished by healthy meals, we’ll have one less reason to be short with our kids.
I could go on but I’ll finish with one last piece of advice: have fun! When life is all work and no play, it frustrates everyone. Having fun with our kids helps us learn to throw caution to the wind. It helps us forget that the laundry needs to be done, that the table needs to be set, that the child is being too rowdy, and whatever else that ails you. So get out. Get silly. Take the kids to the park and play freeze tag. Or sit down and play cars or princesses. Let yourself get immersed in your child’s life and you’ll start to see things from his perspective, and ultimately find yourself more patient with every passing day.
Do you overparent?
There’s a great NY Times article that’s been circulating the social media circles. Titled, “Raising Successful Children,” it talks about how many parents “overparent” or do too much for their children–much to the child’s detriment.
The article talks about finding that balance between being too lax (permissive) and being too controlling (authoritarian). This idea is nothing new to those of us who have read the Ezzos’ books. That parenting sweet spot is called authoritative parenting, not to be confused with authoritarian parenting. The authoritative parent has no fear of taking a position of authority with the child, yet he makes no attempt to control the child. Here’s how the NY Times describes it:
Decades of studies, many of them by Diana Baumrind, a clinical and developmental psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that the optimal parent is one who is involved and responsive, who sets high expectations but respects her child’s autonomy. These “authoritative parents” appear to hit the sweet spot of parental involvement and generally raise children who do better academically, psychologically and socially than children whose parents are either permissive and less involved, or controlling and more involved.
One of the most important tasks of the authoritative parent is knowing when to step back. As the Ezzos tell us, it’s important that children make mistakes–and learn from them–while the stakes are low. But actually letting our children make mistakes is no easy feat.
Hanging back and allowing children to make mistakes is one of the greatest challenges of parenting. It’s easier when they’re young — tolerating a stumbling toddler is far different from allowing a preteenager to meet her friends at the mall.
Being able to step back and let them make mistakes is easier when we understand that parenting is not about ensuring our children’s happiness. It’s about guiding them as they grow, and helping them to become confident, capable adults. Those of us who followed Babywise when our kids were babies are familiar with this idea. Letting a baby cry is so, so difficult, but if it teaches the little one how to sleep well and sleep independently, it’s so worth it in the end.
So if children are able to live with mistakes and even failing, why does it drive us crazy? So many parents have said to me, “I can’t stand to see my child unhappy.” If you can’t stand to see your child unhappy, you are in the wrong business. The small challenges that start in infancy (the first whimper that doesn’t bring you running) present the opportunity for “successful failures,” that is, failures your child can live with and grow from. To rush in too quickly, to shield them, to deprive them of those challenges is to deprive them of the tools they will need to handle the inevitable, difficult, challenging and sometimes devastating demands of life.
And when we’re too concerned with preventing our children from making mistakes, we need to realize that it’s more about us than it is about them. Doing so can have detrimental effects on a child’s developing sense of self:
When we do things for our children out of our own needs rather than theirs, it forces them to circumvent the most critical task of childhood: to develop a robust sense of self.
If pushing, direction, motivation and reward always come from the outside, the child never has the opportunity to craft an inside. Having tutors prep your anxious 3-year-old for a preschool interview because all your friends’ children are going to this particular school or pushing your exhausted child to take one more advanced-placement course because it will ensure her spot as class valedictorian is not involved parenting but toxic overparenting aimed at meeting the parents’ need for status or affirmation and not the child’s needs.
But how exactly do we find the strength and determination to not overparent?
It’s hard to swim upstream, to resist peer pressure. But we must remember that children thrive best in an environment that is reliable, available, consistent and noninterfering.
Finding that balance is all about creating an environment that allows them to fail, but does so in a way that’s safe. I’m all for shielding a child from negative social influences when they are young and super impressionable. Because of this, I make sure they are around people who will show them a good example. At the same time, I make sure they are given the freedom to make mistakes within their sheltered environment. So when they make a mistake, there will be an attentive adult to call attention to the child’s mistake and teach him better alternatives.
Also, I have learned from the Ezzos that the difficult things that are required of parents are not done in spite of the child or the circumstances, but because of them. We maintain healthy marriages not despite parenting demands, but because of them. We don’t put the child in the center of the family despite the child, but because of him. In the same way, we let the child make mistakes and resist overparenting, not despite the child but because of him. All of these difficult tasks that some would say are done selfishly, are in fact, done to provide a healthy, stable foundation for the child.
So if you see signs of overparenting in yourself, don’t be afraid to create a sheltered environment, but know when to step back. Lay the foundation, and then step back and let the child grow.
The untrained parent
As many seasoned parents know, more than half the battle in parenting is training ourselves in what to say and what not to say to our children. This applies to everything from training in first-time obedience to getting a child to stay in his room during roomtime. Here I’ll present a few examples of the differences you might see between the trained and the untrained parent.
The untrained parent: freedoms
Mom: “Johnny, do you want ham or turkey on your sandwich today?
Johnny: “I don’t want those. I want peanut butter and jelly.”
Mom: “Johnny, we don’t have any peanut butter. Do you want ham or turkey today?”
Johnny: “I want peanut butter and jelly!!!”
The conversation ends with mom loading Johnny into the car to buy peanut butter or with Johnny throwing a giant tantrum (or both).
The trained parent: freedoms
Mom: “Johnny, it’s lunch time. Go wash your hands and sit down to eat.”
Johnny: “Yes, mommy!”
Notice that Johnny is not given a choice as to what is served for lunch.
The untrained parent: clean-up time
Mom: “Johnny, will you clean up your toys please? It’s almost time for your nap, and we like to keep the house clean. So do mommy a favor, and clean up your toys.”
Johnny: “No! I don’t want to!”
Mom: “Please, Johnny. It would mean so much to mommy. You like to make mommy happy, don’t you?!
Johnny: “No!”
Mom: “Johnny, you’re making mommy angry. You don’t want to make me angry, do you? Now I’m going to count to 3 and you’re going to clean up your toys. 1…2…2.5…, Johnny, you better start before I get to 3. Okay… 3.”
Johnny: Spits raspberries at mom.
Mom gets so angry and frustrated that she just puts Johnny down for his nap–and cleans up the toys herself.
The trained parent: clean-up time
Mom: “Johnny?”
Johnny: “Yes, mommy?”
Mom: After making sure Johnny looks her in the eye, “It’s time to clean up your toys now.”
Johnny: “Yes, mommy!”
Johnny picks up his toys.
Those of you with little ones should pay attention to this. It’s when they are babies and young toddlers that you need to start training yourself. Very soon, the day will come when your little one decides to assert some independence. He will realize that he has free will, and, if untrained, he will realize that he doesn’t always have to do what you tell him.
There’s one little–but so important–action that happens in the life of almost every toddler I know. Mom calls the child’s name as she always does. And one day, the child gets a twinkle in his eye and runs in the other direction. After suppressing a laugh, mom will have to decide what she’s going to do about it. This simple little act signifies the end of your training time. Once this happens, the game is on!
If you’ve done little reading or planning, you won’t know what to do with the child when he runs away from you. And if there’s anything I can tell you when it comes to parenting, you don’t want to wing it. Do your reading, have a plan and train yourself to follow that plan!
If you haven’t ready my eBook, Live in Harmony with First-Time Obedience, now is the time! Whether you have a little one who has yet to assert his independence or if you’ve been winging it for a while, this book will set you on the right path to training yourself to achieve obedience and ultimately a life of peace and harmony with your child. It takes some work to train ourselves and the child in first-time obedience, but the payoff is huge and so worth it!
Catch trouble before it happens
There are so many parenting tips out there, by the Ezzos and other parenting experts, but there are few as important as preventing behavior problems before they happen. Prevention can save so much heartache, for you and your child. In fact, if you do your best with prevention, you won’t need to discipline much. There are several factors that allow us to prevent behavior problems:
- Scheduling your day
- Making healthy meals and healthy sleep a priority
- Limiting freedoms
- Allowing alone-time with roomtime
- Keeping the child near you
- Having a plan for when things go awry
- Limiting child-centered parenting
- Getting “yes, mommy” and eye contact while training in first-time obedience
- Teaching the interrupt rule
- Having the child fold his hands to quiet the wiggles
- Encouraging and praising our children
I could go on. There is one other important technique that enables us to prevent behavior problems: the reflective sit time.
“A reflective sit time can serve three purposes. First, it is a preventative strategy used to control physical or emotional energy. This is when a child needs to stop, sit down, and get control. Reflective sit times can be used as a maintenance strategy to help a child realign his thinking, and gain self-control over current or potential wrong behavior and move toward wise behavior. Third, a reflective sit time can be used as a corrective strategy assisting a parent in bringing a child to a deeper understanding of his actions and to help facilitate true repentance,” (On Becoming Childwise, p. 217).
A reflective sit time simply means you remove the child from the “scene of the crime” and have him sit. This can be used for any offense and on any surface (couch, floor, bed, etc.). The child doesn’t need to be isolated like he does with a timeout, but he shouldn’t be allowed to play while sitting.
Keeping the child near you throughout the day is key to using this strategy effectively. Since prevention is the key, keeping the child near you will help you recognize problems before they happen.
In the Mom’s Notes, Carla Link tells the story of a child who threw all kinds of tantrums. She realized that before the child threw a tantrum, she would whine. The mom hadn’t recognized this, but Carla in her wisdom recognized the whine as the precursor to the tantrum. So she taught the mom to put the child in a reflective sit time at the point of the whine. Her idea was to never let it get to the tantrum stage by having the child gain control over her emotions while sitting. Brilliant!
Think through any chronic behavior problems you have with your child. Whether it’s fighting with siblings, being destructive with toys, hitting or kicking you, challenging your authority with an attitude, or your run-of-the-mill tantrum, see if there’s a consistent tell-tale sign that shows you that the behavior problem is about to hit. Then put him in a reflective sit time. If you’re not entirely sure of the precursor to your chronic problem, allow him to read a book or two while he’s sitting. Then if you find that the sit time isn’t working, take the book away.
The reflective sit time is such a simple tool, but it’s so powerful!
Parenting the whole child
How balanced is your parenting? Do you parent the whole child or do you tend to favor one aspect of the child’s development over another?
In On Becoming Childwise, the authors urge us to parent all four general capacities of our children. The four general capacities are as follows:
1. Physical. It is our duty to nurture and provide for our children’s physical growth and well-being. This includes not only basic food, clothing and shelter, but also healthy eating habits, regular exercise, good hygiene, and all other things related to their little bodies.
2. Intellectual. The authors say that we are required to provide “basic skills, logic, and useful knowledge.” But I would extend this to say that we need to determine how our children learn best. Whether our kids are educated in preschool, private school, public school or homeschool, we need to do more than simply accept the cultural norm. Find the education solution that works best for the individual child (within the context of the family situation, of course).
3. Emotional. I’m a little troubled by what the book says in regard to this capacity: “Parents help their children establish internal controls over both positive and negative emotions,” (p. 66). Maybe I’m misreading it, but it sounds to me like they’re saying our children need to learn to suppress their emotions. I think parenting our children’s emotional capacity is all about accepting our children’s emotions, no matter what. If my child is physically hurt, I’m going to let him cry. Or if a friend intentionally excludes my child in play, I’m going to acknowledge the sadness that it caused. It’s all about showing that emotions are a normal, acceptable part of life. Parenting in this area is also about showing patience and empathy for others. This can be done through modeling this for them, teaching through direct instruction, and correcting behaviors that go against this goal.
4. Moral. I wholeheartedly agree with this statement: “The duty of a parent is to help his or her child internalize virtues that reflect the values of the family and society,” (p. 66).
But ultimately, no matter how we address each area of parenting, we must find a balanced approach. There are some kids who may need more attention in one capacity than another, but we must still address all areas. To spend all of our time and effort helping the child’s intellectual growth while neglecting any moral teachings represents unhealthy, unbalanced parenting. The same holds true for focusing on moral teachings over emotional attention.
The book sums it up nicely:
“All four facets receive attention. None should be neglected, underdeveloped, or overemphasized. Why is that? Because competence and character go hand in hand. You do not want to raise a smart child who lacks integrity. Nor do you want a great athlete with a shallow intellect. Academic skills without values, values without healthy emotions, happy feelings without productivity, and physical stature without moral wisdom all represent developmental imbalances,” (p. 66).
Stop for a minute to think about how balanced your parenting may be. Do you tend to favor one capacity over another? Does your child require more attention in one area than another? If so, are you able to balance out the other areas? Is any imbalance caused by you, society around you, urgings from family members or friends? If so, don’t be afraid to go against the grain and stand up for a whole child parenting approach.
Impromptu roomtime
Are you home with preschoolers who seem to get into everything? Do you have school-aged kids who complain of summer boredom? We all know that structuring our day can limit boredom and keep little ones out of mischief. And roomtime is a crucial component of any child’s day. That small amount of alone time that can be had through roomtime can do wonders for you and your child. It helps us all recharge our batteries.
But what about those times when we all need roomtime but it’s not yet scheduled for another 3 hours? Is it okay to send the kids to their rooms for an impromptu roomtime? Yes! There are days in every child’s (or adult’s) life when we need more solitude than we’re getting. This is particularly important for the introverts in your family. Say you spent the entire morning at the local children’s museum. Your introverted child will crave roomtime to recover from the morning. It’s okay if roomtime isn’t scheduled until after snack. Let the child have an extra roomtime session after lunch.
Or maybe you’re having 6 of your closest friends (and their children) over for an hours-long play date. This can be overwhelming to an introverted child. Let him have a little bit of roomtime during the play date. Allowing your child to disappear for 20-30 minutes is much better than the attitude issues you’ll have to deal with if you don’t let him have that alone time.
I’ve also found that roomtime can help keep my boys from getting too rowdy. I’m all for letting my boys get on the floor and wrestle, but it needs to be in a somewhat controlled environment with parents watching closely. If my boys are in the playroom and their free play has turned into wrestle-mania, I’ll send them to their rooms for roomtime. I make it clear that it’s not a punishment. They just need that time to calm down and have some time apart. Besides, when they start up with the physical play, it usually means they’re bored. If I don’t have some other activity at the ready, roomtime works wonders.
So no matter what you’re doing with your day or where you are in your schedule, let your kids have an impromptu roomtime whenever it’s needed. And always be on the lookout for attitude problems that could easily be solved with an extra session of roomtime. Whether you’re at the museum, have a play date or even spend the afternoon running errands, let your little ones recharge their batteries in roomtime.
Do you set a good example for your spouse?
Let me know if you can relate to this scenario:
After I’ve been home for 10-12 hours with my boys, my husband walks through the door after a long day at work (and a long commute), and I say “Tag, you’re it!” I figure that now that he’s home from work, he can take over with the kids and let me have a break. We are partners in this effort (yes, it’s often effort) of raising two small, rambunctious boys. So we often share kid duty.
But there are several problems with this. First of all, my husband needs just as much of a break as I do. His work day is different, and he can go to the bathroom by himself, but his day is no less stressful than mine.
The other problem with this is that I’m not setting a good parenting example for him. I am the one who has read the parenting books and know everything we should do to prepare our kids for this world. But at the end of a long day, I’m not the best mom I can be. It’s even worse when I don’t ask him to take over. If I just retreat into the computer or a book for a few minutes without telling him that I need a break, it looks like all I do is ignore my children. Not good!
My husband hasn’t read all of the books, and he depends on me to teach him good parenting methods. This is fine, and we both understand our roles in parenting. But when it’s the end of a very long day and I’m not the most patient mom, that’s all he sees. He doesn’t see the schedule I follow, the room time I require, the “yes, mommy” and eye contact I get before giving an instruction, and more.
I’ve seen with my own eyes what happens when my husband follows the bad example that I model. It’s not a conscious thing for either of us, but it happens nonetheless. So just as much as we need to model good character for our children, we need to do so for our spouses as well. Only then can we expect that our spouses will be the great parents that we hope they will be.
Surprise them with praise
Here’s a great quote to remember:
“Surprise your kids with praise,” (On Becoming Childwise, p.204).
I have discussed the power of encouragement and how much it can affect our kids. There are certainly times when our kids expect our praise and they even seek it from us at times. My kids love to come to me with stories of their good behavior and hear the praise that I give them.
But I have found that the praise that I offer at unexpected times has an even greater effect than the praise they know is coming.
“We have found that the most effective praise is that which comes when the child is not expecting it,” (On Becoming Childwise, p.204).
I have a story that illustrates the power of surprising kids with praise. We have been trying to get Lucas to ride his bike for quite a while. William was riding without training wheels months before the age Lucas is now. Well, Lucas is a sporty kid, but he’d much rather play soccer or baseball than ride a bike. That’s all well and good, but he needs to learn how to ride a bike. We went for a walk this morning, and I wanted to walk fast to get some exercise. My husband and William rode their bikes. Lucas had to ride in the stroller. He wanted to ride his bike, but I said he needs to practice more. He can run faster than he can ride.
So this afternoon, we went out again (for a slow walk) and Lucas rode his bike. He had the motivation, but there were times when he was ready to give up. First, he couldn’t get the brakes right, so he walked the bike down a hill. Then he was ready to give up as we crossed some gravel. I quickly discovered that a little praise was all he needed! I praised and encouraged him the entire way, and he ended up mastering the brakes, riding up a pretty big hill, and standing on the pedals while riding! I am still so proud of him. He was so focused on riding the bike that at no point was he paying attention to me or expecting any bit of praise, so every word I said had great power.
The next time he starts to get a little discouraged by a difficult task (bike riding, homework, whatever), I’ll know that a little bit of unexpected praise will go a long way!
Childhood Fears
By Hank Osborne from Daddy Life
“Fear! It is part of the overall human experience and not simply a childhood phenomenon. Some childhood fears might appear irrational, even silly, to parents because they do not arise from any real external danger, but they are very real to the child and should be respected as such,” Ezzo, Gary, and Robert Bucknam, M.D.. On Becoming Preschoolwise.
Riley is our oldest and has grown out of a couple of these apparent irrational fears. He is still working on some others. In a recent episode of the Home School Support Network podcast he shared two of his fears that are the same as a character in the book he was reviewing for the podcast. One of the fears is thunderstorms. More specifically, he does not like the loud noise of the thunder. This one is difficult to deal with so we try to be proactive and let him stay up until a storm passes or we go ahead and get him when we know a storm is brewing in the middle of the night.
Caden shares Riley’s fear of thunder. The thunderstorms are a cakewalk to deal with compared to some of Caden’s other fears. To help you better understand why these other fears can be difficult to deal with, it would probably be helpful for me to tell you a little about Caden. He is now 7 ½ years old. He was born with a genetic deletion called 22q11.2 (DiGeorge Syndrome). This came with a long list of complex medical challenges that we still battle. Caden has averaged about 30 nights per year in the hospital since birth due to having numerous major surgeries and illnesses. His surgeries to date include:
5 – Open heart surgeries for (IAA Type B, VSD, ASD, Ross Procedure, Pacemaker, oversized PDA, and aortic stenosis)
1 – Heart catheter (went into cardiac arrest during this one requiring CPR)
4 – Back surgeries to place and adjust VEPTR rods for scoliosis
1 – Stomach surgery for a Nissen Fundoplication and G-tube placement
1 – Neck surgery for a Cricopharyngeal Myotomy to try to help him swallow
As for illnesses, he was diagnosed with six distinct cases of pneumonia in 2011 and two cases in 2012. There is also a list of outpatient surgeries too long to list here.
I share these details to set the stage for a situation where we were forced to help Caden get past some of his irrational fears in rapid fashion. Caden’s fear manifested with him becoming hysterical at even the sight of a blood pressure cuff. And this all began one month before an open-heart surgery. You simply can’t go through open-heart surgery and just avoid the blood pressure cuffs during the recovery process. On top of that, every single clinic who sees Caden, no matter what their specialty, wants a blood pressure and pulse reading. We knew from our friends the Ezzos that “children often overcome their fears once they become acquainted with the object of fear.” We had to go into high gear to get Caden acquainted with the blood pressure cuff before the surgery.
The cardiologist gave us one of the velcro blood pressure cuffs exactly like the ones they would use on Caden during recovery in the ICU. Sherry began by leaving the cuff on the floor in the same room where Caden played for the first few days. She then had Caden sit in her lap (hands folded with some crying) with the cuff being a couple of feet away. She only did this a once or twice per day for just a few minutes each time. She would make sure it was closer to him for the next few days until she got to a point where Caden would allow for the cuff to touch his leg. (Not wrap around his leg!) We were well over a week into the process by the time we got to this point. As the days progressed, we worked to get him to allow it to touch his arm and eventually we got him to agree to put it on his favorite stuffed animal (a skunk). A couple of weeks in we finally got him to allow us to put it around his arm. Then we worked on blowing a little bit of air into the hoses to add a slight amount of pressure to his arm. By the time his surgery came around we had achieved our goal! Caden allowed the nurse to take his blood pressure during pre-op with no objections.
Caden did great during this surgery. He was discharged after only four nights in the hospital following a full open chest cavity surgery that required removal and replacement of both his pulmonary artery valve and his aortic valve. He is fast approaching his next valve replacement surgery. The photo above was taken at home just after lunch on a Friday four days after open-heart surgery…without a fear in the world.
Addicted to juice?
Do your kids drink juice throughout the day? Is juice your child’s drink of choice? Do you limit his juice consumption or consider it a healthy option?
Did you know that juice is as bad for you as soda? Yep, you might as well serve your child a big glass of Coke. Now, we all know that no child should be drinking soda. (Right?) But the amount of sugar in juice and soda is about the same. Here’s how it breaks down:
-
Coke: 10 teaspoons of sugar
-
Orange juice: 8 teaspoons of sugar
-
Apple juice: 10 teaspoons of sugar
-
Grape juice: 15 teaspoons of sugar!
Check out this complete list of beverages for their sugar content.
If it’s “100% juice,” all of the sugar comes from the fruit’s natural fructose. But it contains none of the fiber that comes with a plain piece of fruit. If a juice is “10% juice,” most of the sugar comes from high-fructose corn syrup, which we all know is bad for you. The sugar in soda is high-fructose corn syrup. Read this post to learn more about refined sugar in children.
Not that soda is good for any child, but the carbonation at least slows down the consumption. Juice goes right through you, so kids could drink it all day long without feeling full like they would with soda. Neither option is as good as water in hydrating our bodies. In fact, people often mistake thirst for hunger. So we often eat when a glass of water is all we need.
Think again if you think that chocolate milk would be a good substitute. Yes, it has calcium, but it also has 11 teaspoons of sugar. And those “low sugar” juice options aren’t any good either. If my children are going to have sugar, I’d rather they have sugar. I don’t want them consuming chemicals that are made to taste like sugar.
So what should your child be drinking? Water! Water is the healthiest, most natural option available, and it’s what works best to quench our thirst to keep us from getting dehydrated. I also think it’s important to train kids to drink water. I know a few adults who say they don’t like the taste of water. They drink soda, juice or flavored waters but won’t actually drink water at all.
My kids drink filtered tap water during lunch and dinner and throughout the day. Breakfast is the only time of day that I allow a small glass of juice, and that’s only because it’s one of only two sources of calcium. (They’re both allergic to dairy.) They drink organic, calcium-fortified orange juice at breakfast and take a calcium supplement before bed.
So what should you do if your child is addicted to juice? You could try cutting it out cold turkey. But if that is met with tears, water it down bit by bit. Start out with 80% juice, 20% water. Then 60% juice, 40% water. Work your way up day by day until water is all that’s left. Have cups of water available for the child to sip on all day long. My kids know that they are allowed to help themselves to water whenever they want. And they both have sippy cups of water by their beds.
Remember, we are our children’s best role models, so if you are one of those adults who “doesn’t like the taste of water,” try to change your habits and incorporate more water into your day. It’ll be good for your teeth, your waistline, and your skin!