In my professional life I am a deputy head teacher of a large primary school. We encourage parents to toilet train their children before they begin school. Whilst we cannot and do not insist on it, we are aiming for children to be self reliant in this aspect of self care - providing that they don’t have a special need. At the nursery information evening, I am often approached by parents who have ‘tried everything’ with toilet training and are desperately concerned that their child may not be able to use the toilet alone by the time that they start nursery. Having been through the process, I feel a great deal of empathy towards these parents. The words ‘tried everything’ suggest why it hasn’t worked yet. I believe that switching methods, stopping, starting, different potties etc is not helpful to young children. I don’t think it matters exactly how you choose to toilet train your child but choose a method and be relentless. Have supportive friends around you, plenty of time and more pants than you ever imagined your child would need.
This is
my own experience:
About a
month before our planned start date I had a really big push on all the little
things that I was doing towards potty training. I made sure that Little Lady
sat on the potty after lunch or dinner when she was most likely to produce
something. She started to become aware that other children did wees on the
potty. This was mainly through conversation with her. ‘Where does Joshua do his
wees? ‘ and she would reply ‘potty’. Where does mummy do her wees? And she would reply ‘toilet’. I never thought
that I’d have a conversation like that but suddenly it becomes almost normal.
I think
that I was pretty naive in deciding when to begin. I had read somewhere that
potty training is doable from 18 months.
I just basically picked a time when I could have a run at it when the
weather might be reasonable. This coincided with the two week Easter holiday
that I had, which meant
that Little Lady would be 20 months old. What was I thinking?!
I had
read checklists online of whether your child is ready to train and Little Lady
didn’t fit everything on those lists. (Sometimes I’m too single minded for my
own good!) Her major advantage was that at 20 months she had lots of language.
She understood a lot of what we said to her and had plenty of words, including
poo, wee, potty, nappy. The major disadvantage though was that she gave us
virtually no indication of when she was weeing in her nappy and only a slight
indication of producing a poo. She would also deny having a poo in her nappy. I
think this was because she hated having her nappy changed. We sometimes had to
pin down a screaming child to change her nappy, which was a big incentive for
me to get on with the training. No one likes having a screaming child in a
public loo.
I knew
that it would be tough but had not realized how tough the first week would be. It
is a bit of a conundrum: visitors aren’t really helpful because you need to minimise
distractions so that your child can concentrate on learning to use the potty.
However, not seeing other adults and being potty centred for every waking
moment of a toddler’s day is tough. It very nearly tipped me over the edge into
wailing, stressed mummy mode. What I needed was helpful, supportive visitors
who Little Lady knew and who I trusted to help. When a friend called by
on day three
Something
that I did do right in the first week of PT was planning really, really easy
meals. Freezer food which I just had to put in the oven was a great relief. All
that I planned was potty training and that is all I did. It was dull and boring
for Little Lady and I who were used to going out to a playgroup every day. We also had some new toys on hand and some
more toys kindly loaned to us by our next door neighbour who seemed to sense when
help was needed.
Beginning
the training
We began
the training process by using a new doll who could wee into a potty. In another
Saturday night parenting high, I had spent sometime practising with the doll on
the potty to make sure it would actually produce a wee at the crucial moment. When the big moment finally arrived, we fed
the doll some water and I pretended that the doll needed the potty. After a few
moments sitting the doll on the potty Little Lady was delighted to discover the
doll had produced a wee. I praised the doll and gave her a sticker. The doll was given a chocolate raisin but Little
Lady had to eat it as the doll couldn’t. We threw the contents of the potty
into the toilet. The use of the doll really helped to peek Little Lady’s
interest.
I then
introduced Little Lady to her ‘big girl pants’. I took her nappy off and we
chose a pair of pants that she wanted to wear. Looking back this may have been
a mistake and keeping her bare bottomed would probably have been better as we
got through a lot of pairs of pants! In fact, it became a routine in the first
few days to hand wash the pants during her nap so that we would have enough
pairs for the next day! Thankfully the sun was shining enough to dry them.
I then
got Little Lady to sit on the potty. My aim was to catch the next wee and
reward her in the same way that we had rewarded the doll. She spent a while
sitting on the potty looking at books then got up to wander around. In my
slightly nervous state I allowed her a few minutes wandering around before
getting her back on the potty. By spending so much time sitting on the potty we
did manage to successfully catch the first wee and she was very pleased with
herself and the sticker and chocolate raisin that she received.
I think
the first wee was the easiest! We then we managed to miss a couple of wees. Little
Lady was at the first stage: telling me after they had happened! She didn’t
like the sensation of being wet. The first day was exhausting. It was basically
1001 ways of getting her to sit on the potty every 15 minutes or so and
hopefully catching the wee. I had read in a book that it was important to get
as much liquid into your child as possible in these early days. For me this was
a massive error that ended up adding to the stress of the situation. It seemed
like she was weeing all the time and I had no real idea how long she usually
went in between wees.
I found
it really hard keeping Little Lady on the potty long enough for her to relax
and produce something. It was definitely important to sit alongside her and
wait. Here are a few things that did work:
A big
pile of books
A
magnetic drawing board
Songs on
the internet
Stickers
Games on
the ipad
And as a
last resort - T.V. We used programmes on the internet as they have a definite
end without going into the next one.
We had a
small camping table the right height for Little Lady when she was on the potty.
This meant that we could do jigsaws, drawing, gluing and sticking old
magazines, stamping.
The ipad
and the T.V. were by far the most convenient but also the most problematic
because Little Lady liked them too much and didn’t want them to be switched
off!
Rewards
We had
three kinds of rewards initially - stickers, chocolate drops/chocolate raisins
and telling other people of Little Lady’s success. These rewards were
accompanied by lots of praise and talking about what a big girl she was. As
time went on I would just have little pots of chocolate raisins or chocolate
buttons in my bag, upstairs and downstairs. Little Lady didn’t really have
chocolate otherwise so this was quite a treat. Not everyone agrees with a food
reward but I felt it was helpful and not indefinite.
Feeling
like giving up
Expect to
think about giving up, talk about giving up and be constantly debating the pros
and cons of giving up in the early days of potty training. This lasted about a
week for me. My poor friends must have been fed up of this conversation. Potty
training is very, very hard. I think that the younger the child is, the harder
it is. I am not sure that I even believe people who say it is easy. Don’t give
up. Give the training a fair run to work. That’s got to be at least one to two
weeks and then like any parenting challenge, it suddenly gets a lot easier.
I was
fortunate to have a very honest friend who described potty training as one of
the hardest weeks of parenting (until her second child arrived). It’s so refreshing
and helpful to have people who are honest rather than those who create an
impression of everything working immediately. Her honesty helped me to carry
on. Another friend who works with families really helped me to stop giving up
by reminding me that it was going to be hard whenever I did it. I could not
face the dread of starting the process starting again and throwing away the
hard work that Little Lady and I had already put in.
Looking
back now I feel that it was fairest to Little Lady to keep going. Young
children like to have routine and boundaries. I’d introduced a whole load of
new ones in the first week of potty training and to suddenly throw those things
out would have been very confusing. She was happy if slightly bemused and it
was just me who was collapsing on the sofa each evening wondering when normal
service would resume.
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