When should I start potty training? What books should I read? Can I do it in a day (or a week)? Do I need stickers (for rewards)? Does it have to be stressful?
I get these kinds of questions pretty often, and I’d resisted doing an episode on potty training because there are so many books on it already, and everyone has their opinion, and I really didn’t want to wade into it. But ya’ll kept asking and my resolve has finally crumbled, so today we’re going to talk all about what the research says, what the books say, and how there’s essentially no correlation between the books and the research. We’ll review the “do it in a day!” methods and what makes them successful, and we’ll also look at child-led methods. You’ll leave this episode with a clear picture of which is probably going to work best for you, and some concrete tools you can put to work (today, if you need to!) to start what I prefer to call the “toilet learning” process.
Other episodes references in this show
021: Talk Sex Today
009: Do you punish your child with rewards?
020: How do I get my child to do what I want them to do? (Unconditional parenting)
042: Manners
References
Au, S. &; Stavinoha, P.L. (2008). Stress-free potty training: A commonsense guide to finding the right approach for your child. New York, NY: AMACOM.
Barone, J.G., Jasutkar, N., & Schneider, D. (2009). Later toilet training is associated with urge incontinence in children. Journal of Pediatric Urology 5, 458-461.
Benjusuwantep, B., & Ruangdaraganon, N. (2011). Infant toilet training in Thailand: Starting and completion age and factors determining them. Journal of the Medical Association of Thailand 94(12), 1441-1446.
Blum, N.J., Taubman, B., & Nemeth, N. (2003). Relationship between age at initiation of toilet training and duration of training: A prospective study. Pediatrics 111(4), 810-814.
Butler, J.F. (The toilet training success of parents after reading Toilet Training In Less Than A Day. Behavior Therapy 7, 185-191.
Duong, T.H., Jansson, U-B., & Hellstrom, A-L. (2013). Vietnamese mothers’ experiences with potty training procedure for children from birth to 2 years of age. Journal of Pediatric Urology 9, 808-814.
Fertleman, C., & Cave, S. (2011). Potty training girls the easy way: A stress-free guide to helping your daughter learn quickly. Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo.
Fertleman, C. & Cave, S. (2009). Potty training boys the easy way: Helping your son learn quickly – even if he’s a late starter. Philadelphia, PA: Da Capo.
Gerber, M. (2002). Dear parent: Caring for infants with respect (2 nd Ed.). Los Angeles, CA: Resources for Infant Educarers.
Glowacki, J. (2015). Oh, crap! Potty training: Everything modern parents need to know to do it once and do it right. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Goode, E. (1999, January 12). Two experts do battle over potty training. The New York Times. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/12/us/two-experts- do-battle- over-potty- training.html
Gross-Loh, C. (2007). The diaper-free baby: The natural toilet training alternative. New York, NY: William Morrow.
Horn, I.B., Brenner, R., Rao, M., & Cheng, T.L. (2006). Beliefs about the appropriate age for initiating toilet training: Are there racial and socioeconomic differences? Journal of Pediatrics 149, 165-168.
Kaerts, N., Van Hal, G., Vermandel, A., & Wyndaele, J-J. (2012). Readiness signs used to define the proper moment to start toilet training: A review of the literature. Neurology and Urodynamics 31, 437-440.
Kimball, V. (2016). The perils and pitfalls of potty training. Pediatric Annals 45(6), 199-201.
Koc, I., Camurdan, A.D., Beyazova, U., Ilhan, M.N., & Sahin, F. (2008). Toilet training in Turkey: The factors that affect timing and duration in different sociocultural groups. Child: Care, Health and Development 34(4), 475-481.
Martin, J.A., King, D.R., Maccoby, E.E., & Jacklin, C.N. (1984). Secular trends and individual differences in toilet-training progress. Journal of Pediatric Psychology 9(4), 457-468.
Matson, J.L., & Ollendick, T.H. (1977). Issues in toilet training normal children. Behavior Theraly 8, 549-553.
Shaikh, N. (2004). Time to get on the potty: Are constipation and toileting refusal causing delayed toilet training? Journal of Pediatrics 145, 12-13.
Taubman, B. (1997). Toilet training and toileting refusal for stool only: A prospective study. Pediatrics 99(1), 54-58.
Vermadel, A., Van Kamepn, M., Van Gorp, C., & Wyndaele, J-J. (2008). How to toilet train healthy children? A review of the literature. Neurology & Urodynamics 27, 162-166.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. I had actually resisted doing an episode on today’s topic for quite a while but listeners kept emailing to ask me about it so my resistance has crumbled and today we’re going to talk about potty training. I prefer to call it toilet learning, but we’re going to look at a lot of different studies on this topic and I’m going to use the language that the individual authors use in their work.
There are SO MANY books about it and everyone seems to have their own opinion about it and I kind of didn’t want to stir the pot. Or even put my oar in it, to mix metaphors. But you, my dear listeners, have spoken, and so I, your humble research assistant, have listened, and so today we are going to talk about potty training. And toilet learning. And we’re going to look at all of this through the lens of respectful parenting, because practitioners of respectful parenting have a fair bit to say on this topic.
So for those of you who listen to the show regularly, it probably won’t be enormously surprising for you to hear that toilet learning is profoundly impacted by cultural considerations. Starting with the earliest possible age for toilet learning, we come to the concept of Elimination Communication, abbreviated to EC, which was popularized anew in Christine Gross-Loh’s book The Diaper-Free Baby, and I’m going to spare you the $13 on Amazon or even the three week wait in your library’s hold queue and tell you that the method basically involves watching for and learning a baby’s signals that he or she needs to pee or poo and providing opportunities to go at that time, providing opportunities to go at regular intervals even when the baby doesn’t indicate readiness, and making a whistling or zzzzz sound while you hold the baby over a potty or a hole in the garden which tells the baby that it’s time to go. Not much to it, right?
This approach is, of course, most common in countries where interdependence, rather than independence, is prized – since it relies so heavily on reading signals given by others, it’s not surprising that this approach is used in countries like China and Vietnam where a big part of being a citizen in society is developing the ability to read signals given by other people. The key to all of this is that it’s done when the baby is very young. And I’m talking infant stage. A study conducted by a joint Vietnamese-Swedish research team interviewed forty seven mothers about their potty training experiences from the time the babies were newborns until they were 24 months old; the researchers stopped interviewing the mothers when the babies were 24 months because all of the children were potty trained by then. To a Western audience, that must sound incredible – I was certainly pretty surprised, and I even had some experience with EC.
The Digo tribe in East Africa begins toilet training a few weeks after birth; they expect some dryness at night by around six months and complete dryness at one year. The babies are in constant contact with the mothers for the first couple of months of the baby’s life and whenever the mothers sense that the baby needs to pee or poop the mother holds the baby between her knees. When the baby is 3-5 months old a sibling or other female family member aged between 5-12 years takes over primary care of the baby during the day, and if an accident occurs it is actually the caregiver rather than the infant who is punished. So in the Digo culture, it is primarily the responsibility of parents and caregivers to recognize and respond to the child after the child indicates their need to pee or poop. This is in stark contrast to Western cultures where the responsibility is primarily placed on the child to indicate that they need to pee or poop and to get themselves to the toilet, undress, void, wipe, and re-dress. One study looked at mothers from different backgrounds in Turkey, and found that the both the age of initiation of potty training as well as the age of completion was much earlier among rural families that lived in homes without an inside toilet, families using washable diapers, and families who punish children. Mothers having an education of more than 12 years tended to initiate training much later and used a more child-led approach.
We had a pretty traumatic first few months with my own daughter’s peeing; she would cry as soon as she peed and would continue to cry
