As with most things in the course of a child’s development, the very simple answer is to wait until he is ready. This is not just about pandering to what your child wants , but about being in tune with him and working with him rather than against him.
I initially wanted to write this post about getting children to move out of their parents’ bed if they’ve been bed-sharing for some time, but I realised that the principles I wanted to write about apply to so many things and the first thing that came to my mind was potty training.
Leaving aside those babies whose parents practice elimination communication with them, most of us have met parents for whom potty training has gone wonderfully and parents for whom potty training has been a long, drawn-out nightmare of wet underwear and months or even years, of needing to carry around spare clothes.
The problem is that all children are ready for potty training at different times, but our society doesn’t like that. Our society likes to see children doing things at the same time. It likes to see children all being able to read by the age of 6 or 7. It likes to see children all sleeping through the night by the age of six months. And it likes to see children potty-trained around three years old.
We parents are under pressure, particularly, it seems, parents of boys, who often seem to be ready for potty training later than girls are.
The trouble is that a child needs to be both physically and emotionally ready for a new development, and these two things sometimes don’t come at the same time, which can be very frustrating for parents. One of my children was more than ready physically for potty training, but no way was she emotionally ready. We had to break the biggest rule in the potty training book and put her back in nappies for a week!
When children are potty-trained too young – before they are both emotionally and physically ready – it can take far, far longer than if you are able to wait for the right time, but once you’ve got started, it’s very difficult to stop and it’s very confusing for a child if you do a stop-start-stop-start thing for months on end.
Personally, I don’t think it’s the end of the world to go back into nappies if you realise it’s not the right time, but it has to be completely back into nappies (apart from if your child asks to use the potty or loo, of course), not ‘back into nappies for one day, and then try and do potty training again the next day, find it hasn’t worked and then go back into nappies again’.
Often, if you can wait, parents find that their children take only a week or two and a few accidents to be fully, and happily potty trained (in the daytime, at least). So if you don’t feel that age two or three or whatever is right for your child, then try to ignore any pressure coming from friends or family or anywhere and just trust that your child will be ready at some point, and forcing the issue now is probably counter productive.
(Of course, if there are any other signs that there might be some developmental delay, it may be worth consulting with a trusted health care professional, just to rule anything worrying out.)
What were your experiences of potty-training? Smooth? Stressful?
Image: djwudi, Flickr
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