By Elizabeth Pantley, author of Gentle Baby Care and The No-Cry Sleep Solution
Potty training can be natural, easy, and peaceful. The first step is to know the facts.
- The perfect age to begin potty training is different for every child. Your child’s best starting age could be anywhere from eighteen to thirty-two months. Pre-potty training preparation can begin when a child is as young as ten months.
- You can begin training at any age, but your child’s biology, skills, and readiness will determine when he can take over his own toileting.
- Teaching your child how to use the toilet can, and should, be as natural as teaching him to build a block tower or use a spoon.
- No matter the age that toilet training begins, most children become physically capable of independent toileting between ages two and a half and four.
- It takes three to twelve months from the start of training to daytime toilet independence. The more readiness skills that a child possesses, the quicker the process will be.
- The age that a child masters toileting has absolutely no correlation to future abilities or intelligence.
- There isn’t only one right way to potty train – any approach you use can work – if you are pleasant, positive and patient.
- Nighttime dryness is achieved only when a child’s physiology supports this–you can’t rush it.
- A parent’s readiness to train is just as important as a child’s readiness to learn.
- Potty training need not be expensive. A potty chair, a dozen pairs of training pants and a relaxed and pleasant attitude are all that you really need. Anything else is truly optional.
- Most toddlers urinate four to eight times each day, usually about every two hours or so.
- Most toddlers have one or two bowel movements each day, some have three, and others skip a day or two in between movements. In general, each child has a regular pattern.
- More than 80 percent of children experience setbacks in toilet training. This means that what we call “setbacks” are really just the usual path to mastery of toileting.
- Ninety-eight percent of children are completely daytime independent by age four.
This article is an excerpt from The No-Cry Potty Training Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Child Say Good-Bye to Diapers by Elizabeth Pantley. (McGraw-Hill, 2006)
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Parenting educator Elizabeth Pantley is president of Better Beginnings, Inc., a family resource and education company. Elizabeth frequently speaks to parents at schools, hospitals, and parent groups around the world. Her presentations are received with enthusiasm, and praised as realistic, warm and helpful.
She is a regular radio show guest and frequently quoted as a parenting expert in newspapers and magazines such as Parents, Parenting, American Baby, Woman’s Day, Good Housekeeping, and Redbook and on hundreds of parent-directed Web sites. She publishes a newsletter, Parent Tips, which is distributed in schools nationwide.
Elizabeth is the author of eight popular parenting books, available in 18 languages, and she was a contributing author to The Successful Child with Dr. William and Martha Sears.
Elizabeth and her husband, Robert live in the state of Washington , along with their four children, Angela, Vanessa, David, and Coleton, and “Grama.” Elizabeth is an involved participant in her children’s school and sports activities and has served in positions as varied as softball coach and school PTA president.
Website: http://www.pantley.com/elizabeth
