Potty Training:  When and How?

Listen to any group of parents discussing their toddlers, and the talk invariably turns to bodily functions.  Particularly with your first child, you may be anxious to talk to anyone and everyone about how to potty train your toddler.  Grandparents get in on the act, too, offering unsolicited advice and unbelievable tales such as, “She just trained herself,” and “I had mine trained at six months.”

There’s no magic age at which potty training should happen.  You’re the parent, and therefore the expert on your child, so together you will know when it is time to launch into this adventure as a team. 


Ready or Not?

While leaving the diapering years is a major milestone for you and your child, it need not be a mystery or a stressor.  Often, toddlers will learn to use the potty when they are ready  – and no amount of your cajoling will make that moment come any sooner.  You can, however, look for readiness cues and help your toddler take this huge step toward independence.

Once a child is able to stay dry for a few hours at a time, and produces a significant amount of urine at once, you’ll know he’s ready to start thinking about training.  Well-formed, regular bowel movements at more or less predictable times is another physical sign that he’s ready to start training.
Other important physical milestones are the ability to take his pants down, a dislike for the feeling of a dirty diaper, and his giving you signs that he’s about to go.  You’ll know these when you see them:  a grimace, a frown, a hurried walk to a corner where he’s visibly, well, busy. 

Toddlers also need the cognitive ability to understand that certain things go in certain places.  If you can tell your child, “Go put the shoe back in the basket,” chances are he’s going to understand the concept of “poopie goes in the potty.”  Your child also needs to have language skills for potty training.  If he has words for urine and feces, he’s starting to understand the concept.

If you child can’t sit still long enough to produce anything in the potty, he’s not quite ready.  An attention span sufficient to sit still and at least try out the potty is a must for staring the training process. 


How Can I Help the Process?

When children sit in their car seats, they get to go somewhere; in their highchairs, they get fed.  Make sitting on the potty have a point, too.  Motivational charts or stickers may work for your child.  If he sees his progress, he may be inclined to keep using the potty.  You may find that offering your child a reward of some small trinket from a special potty treasure chest encourages him, too.  Keep a supply of reading materials in the bathroom, or near the potty seat if you use it in another room of the house, so that your child has something to keep his attention. 

As with so many other aspects of human behavior, peer pressure is a factor.  If your child is in a daycare setting where other children are using the potty, he may feel the pressure to step up.  Likewise, older siblings can be great role models.  If everyone else in the house is doing it, your child may want to, too.  Don’t let peer pressure get to you, however.  If your child is the last one in his daycare class to use the potty, you haven’t failed as a parent.

Remember, potty training is a process, so try not to focus so much on the product that you lose sight of the gradual accomplishments your toddler makes along the way.  Even after your child has achieved potty training, there will be accidents.  If you don’t make a big issue out of these, and instead focus on the positive, you’ll both find that potty training doesn’t have to be an ordeal.