Respectful Toilet Learning I had breakfast with a friend, Melinda, yesterday. After we caught up on the kids and husbands, we were reminiscing about our children when they were younger and the things we wish we had known when they were little. One of the things Melinda said she still remembers vividly is toilet training her oldest daughter, Sonia. She said it was a terrible struggle and very frustrating for the both of them. Melinda said training her younger daughter was a breeze. As she continued she told me that she was in a hurry to get Sonia toilet trained so that she could put her in preschool because she needed to go back for work. Melinda wondered if the struggle had something to do with Sonia s biological readiness for toilet training. I told Melinda that Sonia probably wasn t physiologically ready to be toilet trained when she tried to train her. The younger one was easier to train, because there was no rush or stress to train her. The scenario that Melinda described above is not new and continues today as parents give in to outside pressures from their parents, peers, preschools and their jobs to toilet train their children before their bodies are ready to take on this huge undertaking. Toilet training like eating and sleeping is another area that a child has complete power over. Therefore, toilet training can turn into a huge power struggle fraught with stress and frustration on the part of the parent that can go on for years. I recently worked with a family that was still trying to toilet train their 5 year old son who was already in Kindergarten with mixed success. Once it goes on for this long (over 2 years) a Psychologist needs to get involved to solve the other deep issues that have childhood. evolved from toilet training so that the issues don t linger into middle and late Respectful Toilet Learning is a win-win for the parent and child. This guide will help you to be in tune with your child and her personality. You will learn when to step in and when to stand back. You will learn confidence as a parent and your child will learn confidence in herself (we ll use the feminine to mean both male and female). There are 3 goals to Respectful Toilet Learning: 1) Parents will learn to trust themselves and avoid outside pressures to let their child lead when she is ready to toilet learn. 2) Parents will learn the readiness skills that their child needs to possess before she is ready to use the toilet. 3) Parents will learn the steps to teach toilet skills to their children.
If Melinda had known what readiness skills to look for in her girls, she would have known that her older daughter was not ready for toilet learning and would have waited until she was ready, thus saving both of them a lot of frustration and grief. These are the skills that a child must have in order to begin toilet learning (simply use this checklist as a guide): After learning to walk, your child is now ready to sit for short periods of time for new activities or to be read a book. Your child can follow a two step command such as Go to your room and bring back your shoes Your child is able to say, NO! when she doesn t want something or doesn t want to do something. She is able to put things where they belong. For example, she puts her blocks with other blocks and her shoes with other shoes. Your child imitates what you do. Your child urinates at predictable times and has predictable bowel movements. Your child is aware of her bodily functions; she points out her wet diapers, grunts when having a BM, can label her body parts and is interested in her sex organs. The child will pull on a wet or soiled diaper or ask to be changed During fantasy play your child may act out questions or fears about bodily functions or put a doll or truck on the potty. Your child may start to use toilet talk i.e. poo poo, pee pee etc. She can dress and undress herself She has an awareness of how others use the toilet If you see any of these, your child is NOT ready to use the toilet: Stands at the potty and pees on the floor Does not want the diaper taken off-screams and struggles Takes diaper off and has a BM on the floor Sits in a diaper with a BM and is content Hides in the corner to have a BM Says No, no, no if parent asks if she is ready for a BM Shows resistance to using the potty If your child is exhibiting any of the above, she is not ready to learn to use the toilet. The best thing for you to do is to wait until your child shows an interest in toilet learning. Remember that your child is in charge of using the toilet and if you put pressure on her, toilet learning will turn into a power struggle that she will win. So leave your child in diapers or pull-ups which ever she
prefers and ignore toilet learning until she has all of the readiness skills above or she tells you she wants to use the potty/toilet. Sometimes children will regress during toilet learning and show some of the behaviors mentioned above. If this happens, your child may be feeling stress or pressured. You may need to take a step backwards from where you are in toilet learning, or you may need to start from the beginning, or give toilet learning a rest altogether. It may take your child a few days or weeks to go back to toilet learning, but trust me, she will. Once there is no pressure or stress and she is able to go at her own pace, she will once again be ready to learn to use the toilet. Once your child has achieved the Readiness Skills, your child is ready to move on to Toilet Learning. But are you, the parent ready? Can you move through this process with your child without exerting pressure on your child, allowing her to go at her own pace? Can you stay calm when she has an accident and not shame her? Can you stay calm and not get overexcited when she urinates or has a BM in the toilet? Remember, this is your child s accomplishment, not yours. Your emotions need to stay neutral, so you need to stay in control of yourself. Don t throw a party!! Give her a high five or a kiss and ask her if she is proud of her accomplishment. These are important skills that you the parent needs before toilet learning can begin. Are you sure you are ready? Melinda didn t know that Toilet Learning is a shared process between parent and child, so she pushed her daughter to be toilet trained to fit someone else s timetable, not her own. Soon Sonia had negative emotions toward the process and didn t want to use the toilet or have anything to do with the process. If Melinda was using Respectful Toilet Learning, she would have noticed Sonia s negative reactions and stopped at the point where she sensed the negative reactions or she may have gone all the way back to the beginning and started over again after a break. Using respectful toilet learning requires that you trust your judgment and that you know your child and what she needs. Remember that this may mean going back to diapers and ignoring toilet learning completely until your child lets you know that she is ready again. We re going to leave Melinda and Sonia behind for a little while we go through the steps of respectful toilet learning. Warning: Before you begin toilet learning, be sure that there have not been any recent changes in your lives nor will there be in the next few months. If there have or will be, it is best to wait to teach your child to use the toilet until these transitions have passed and your family routine is back to
normal for a month or two. Too many changes for a child this age can overwhelm her and make learning to use the toilet overwhelming. Toilet learning should start when you have a period of one to two weeks with a clear schedule; no dinner engagements, outings, or errands that will take you and your child away from each other and away from her potty for more than an hour. You are teaching your child a new skill. In order for your child to learn this new skill, it needs to be repeated over and over again in the same setting before it can be generalized to other settings and possibly with other people. Ready Set, Go Your child has shown you that she is interested in learning to use the potty. What do you do now? 1) Take her to the store and let her choose her own potty. Give her a choice of a few or she will be confused by the myriad of choices that there are today. Take it home and let her unpack it and put it in the bathroom where she wants it. Don t buy a potty with a deflector for a boy. If he sits on it wrong one time and hurts himself, he won t want to use it again for a long time if ever. 2) Change her into cloth diapers as cloth diapers will let her feel more of the urination or BM. Some disposable diapers let your child feel when she has urinated or had a BM the same as cloth diapers. This allows her to feel her bodily functions and will aid in training. 3) When she shows interest in the potty let her sit on it in all her clothes while you sit on yours. Talk to her, read or sing. Let her sit as long or as short as she likes. 4) Once she is used to sitting on the toilet when you sit on yours, take her to the potty when she dirties her diaper, undo the sides and empty the contents into her potty. If she doesn t want you to dirty her potty, don t do it. This helps her make the connection of where the contents of her diaper should go. 5) Now for the really big step: Let her run around the house or outside bare bottomed. When running around outside, the child will eventually need to urinate or defecate. Your child will be interested in what is coming out of her body and will watch. This will help her to really make the connection of her bodily functions and where her waste comes from. If it is too cold outside or you prefer not to have your child bare bottomed outside, bring the potty into the room where you are. Your child will eventually make the connection to use the potty when the urge is felt. Remember to keep your reactions low key so that you don t scare her. A simple, you went in the potty just like me should be sufficient.
6) If your child is excited about her success and interested, you can offer her training pants to wear. This way she can pull down and up her own pants. This is another step toward independence. The photo at left shows training pants with a waterproof cover which can be purchased from www.angelbunz.com. 7) Next you can ask your child if she is ready to drop the contents of her potty into the toilet. It isn t time to flush yet! 8) When your child shows an interest in flushing the toilet, let her flush it. 9) Lastly when your child shows an interest, offer steps so that she can climb up and use the toilet. Girls and boys should both sit facing the tank. This allows both sexes stability on the toilet so that they don t feel like they will fall in and it also allows them to watch themselves urinate and defecate, something that continues to fascinate them at this age. For boys, this is a good way to teach them to aim before you teach them to stand. Teaching boys to aim can be fun if you make targets out of toilet paper and indelible markers. You can also buy targets made for this purpose. a. Once your child gets the hang of using the toilet, she is going to want to use the toilet everywhere you go. You ll see some nice and not so nice bathrooms. It s a good idea to carry with you either a portable fold-up potty seat and/or toilet seat covers and baby wipes just in case. You ll also run into merchants who say that their restrooms are just for customers and won t let you use their bathrooms. I had a merchant tell me this once, so I told my son to pee on the floor. The merchant was more than happy to let my son use their restroom after that. b. A lot of department stores and airports have automatic flushing toilets. These can be very scary for children. They are loud and unexpected, so you need to teach your children about them before your child encounters one when she is in a hurry to use the toilet. Here s how you do it. Take your child into the restroom. Explain that they have these automatic flushing toilets here. Tell your child that you want to show her how the toilet works before she needs to use one. Take her into the stall and sit on the toilet. Tell her that when you get up it is going to flush by itself, magic. Then when you get up you can both wait for the toilet to flush. If your child doesn t like loud noises, have her put her hands over her ears ahead of time. Then ask her if she wants to try. If she does, great, if not that s OK too. Now she is prepared for her first time using an automatic flushing toilet. I had a student with Autism once in my class. He didn t like loud noises. When he flushed the toilet, he covered both of his ears while he flushed the toilet with his foot. I always wondered how he did with the automatic flushing toilets. He could cover his ears and not have to worry about flushing it, but the downside is that the toilets are much louder than a regular toilet.
10) When your child has been using the toilet regularly with minimal accidents, take her to the store to buy underwear and let her pick them out. What about accidents? In the beginning, you should remind your child to use the toilet every hour and a half or two hours. However some children don t like to be reminded. If this is the case with your child, you can try using a timer, or a bag or box of highly preferred toys that your child can only use in the bathroom. These toys should be enough to lure her into the bathroom at regular intervals. All children will have accidents at one time or another. They get busy playing and forget to go to the bathroom. As part of toilet learning, you need to teach your child what to do in case of an accident. So, do an accident drill, like a fire drill so she will know what to do. Wet a pair of your child s underwear. If you are really adventurous, you can even put peanut butter or cream cheese in them (yucky, but not as yucky as the real thing). Then teach your child what to do with wet and/or soiled underwear. Show her where to put wet/soiled underwear. Do you want her to put the BM in the toilet and the wet underwear in the hamper? Show her how to clean herself up. How many pieces of toilet paper should she use, or how many baby wipes? Lastly, show her where you keep her clean underwear and clothes so she can change her clothes. She will be proud to know that she can take care of an accident. Of course, you will also let her know that you will always be there to help her if she needs it. Nap Time When your child can go 2-3 hours between using the potty, you can try putting her down for a nap in training pants. If she wakes up wet, it s OK; she can change herself and try again tomorrow. Try encouraging her to go longer between bathroom breaks to strengthen her bladder control. If she wants to go back to diapers for naps, that s ok too. Dry at night 1.You can start this when your child has been dry during naps for a while, and she asks to be dry at night. Don t start this too early. She needs to be able to go 3-4 hours between urinating. Until then she should be kept in diapers or heavy Pull-Ups at night until you are sure. 2. Keep liquids to a minimum after dinner 3. You will want to start by layering the bed. Start with a rubber sheet, then a blanket to make the bed soft then a bed sheet, then a rubber sheet, a blanket, then a bed sheet etc. for as many layers as you think you may need. This ways if she has an accident, she can be changed, pull off the wet sheet and she has a dry bed. You don t need to be hunting around for dry sheets in the middle of the night. You will be happy you did this in the middle of the night if your child has an accident.
4. If your child wakes up wet in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, this is not time to play, keep the lights low, minimize talking and put her back to bed. Eventually, do less and less until can do the routine by herself. We are encouraging independence trying to get our beauty rest. 5.Also, remember to stay calm and nonchalant when she stays dry at time and in the morning. she and nap Congratulations! You and your child made it through Respectful Toilet Learning. You are on your way to a respectful relationship with your child. You have learned to respect her boundaries and personality. You learned to be a better parent through ignoring outside pressures and following your instincts regarding what is best for your child and your family. When your child needed more time, you let her take more time, when she accomplished a task, you allowed her to be proud of herself. You accomplished something a lot of parents haven t, you learned to stay patient and let your child take the lead avoiding a power-struggle with your young child which could have affected you both for years to come. Melinda learned to have a respectful relationship with her daughters after her first frustrating toilet training. She learned to respect her children s boundaries and personalities and to ignore outside pressures so she could follow her parenting instincts. She learned many more parenting skills along the way. Both of Melinda s daughters are career women giving back to the community.