No need for begging and bribes. There’s an easier way.
That’s right. Stop stressing about toilet training.
Forget all those charts and stickers, the pleading and wheedling, and the desperate search for the perfect potty that your child will actually agree to place his or her precious bottom on (maybe the one that plays tunes will do the trick?).
Janet Lansbury, from Elevating Child Care, is one of the parenting gurus who believes that kids don’t need toilet training. Not that kids don’t need to learn to go to the toilet, but they don’t need adults to train them. There’s a difference.
According to Janet, adult-led toilet training is unnecessary. The headaches and power struggles aren’t worth it. We should just let our children decide when they want to stop wearing nappies.
She also believes adult-led toilet training is risky. Kids need to be physically ready – their bladders and bowels have to be up to it – and they need to understand what they’re doing.
On top of that, they need to be emotionally ready. If we try to push kids into toilet training, they can resist, for no other reason than the fact that they're toddlers and that's what toddlers like to do. In some cases, kids will just decide to hold on until they're severely constipated. Ow.
So what do you do?
Well, you talk kids through nappy changes, from the time they're born. You let kids see other family members going to the toilet. You make a potty available, and you offer the choice of nappies or underwear. But you never push or bribe. You trust your child.
Which is fine, when you've got all the time in the world.
I have to admit, I wondered for a while if my son was ever going to be toilet-trained. I knew he had to be out of nappies to go to preschool, and the start date was only a few months off, but he flat-out refused to sit on the potty. I tried tempting him with exciting big-boy underpants. I tried bribing him by offering to buy more of his favourite books. I think I may have even offered cash. No deal.
Just when I was getting desperate, my son announced he would sit on the potty, on a date in the future that he had chosen: the "twenty-oneth" of November.
The date arrived.
He sat on the potty. He stopped wearing nappies, day and night. He never, ever wet the bed.
Maybe there is something to this child-led toilet training after all.
Did you let your child choose when to stop wearing nappies?
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