Parenting is…

Potty training is one of the most controversial, conflict-ridden and anxiety-filled topic in parenting. It probably takes second place only to sleep issues. I spent countless months wistfully looking at kids with no sagging diapers, with tops of cute little undies sticking out from their pants. Boy, how I wished our diaper struggles were over and I could figure out a way to get Alex happily using the potty!

There are several basic approaches to potty training.

First is known in the US as infant potty training, or elimination communication. There is some variance as to the specific methodology, but the basic idea is, you teach the child to go on the potty from infancy - starting some time in the first year. Disposable diapers are a big no-no and ideally, the child should spend as much time as possible with nothing on. The mommy learns to read the signs and “catch” potty moments, and the child gets used to that being how he eliminates.

Advocates of the Positive discipline and Montessori method, as well as many attachment parenting experts believe that you should not be potty training at all.  Show your child how to go on the potty, make the potty accessible and wait for him to begin imitating you.

Probably the majority of Americans take the approach of gradually getting the child used the the potty, switching to pullups, and getting slow steady progress over the course of many months.

Finally, there are those who recommend doing it “cold turkey”: explain to the child what is going to happen, take off the diapers and never put them on again except for sleep.

I looked into elimination communication and decided that I was not willing to invest the time required (mine or the baby’s) into the approach. There is so much I wanted to do with Alex, and I simply did not want to live by the timetable of the next elimination. Another issue is that until the child is physically ready to control eliminations (something which happens at 18-24 months), you won’t achieve success anyway. So the idea is, spend a year or more running to the potty every 10-15 minutes, so you could have him out of diapers by the age of two…

The “let them be” approach would be appealing if I didn’t know so many people whose four-year-olds still preferred diapers. In addition, my little adorable toddler is a big drinker and diapers simply got overfilled after a single elimination, leaving wet messes everywhere! I had to do something sooner rather than later.

I went with the “cold turkey” option after reading Gina Ford’s book “Potty training in one week.” She argues that the half-measures approach of pullups simply doesn’t work because it sends mixed signals to the child. The argument made sense.

Today is Alex’s second birthday. He is happy and proud of himself for having learned to use the potty and astounded all of us by interrupting exciting birthday activities time and time again to go to the potty on his own. This was the first truly successful day after a week of turmoil. We are not done yet - he hasn’t learned to pull his pants up and down. So he is only accident-free while bare-bottomed.

Here are some thing I have learned in the process. Most importantly - accidents are key to learning! How can a child learn to handle a cup properly without being allowed to spill the drink when he does it wrong?! 100% of the stress in our week of potty training came from our (the parents’) desire to minimize accidents. Simply being allowed to eliminate on the floor (roll away the carpet, or plan to call carpet cleaning people after a week or two!), helping clean up and learning that pee-pee is messy will cause him to want to avoid it. At first, it may results in a different kind of accident: he’ll hold it in as long as he can, until he explodes in a gush, which surprises you and him. Well, after a while, he learns that he has to go eventually. As he starts doing the pee-pee dance, you might pick him up and sit him on the potty a few times, showing him that there is a solution!  Before I knew it, he was interrupting activities, opening sliding doors, and heading straight for the “solution” I taught him.

Asking a child if he wants to go potty every 15 minutes doesn’t teach him to use the potty. It’s irritating, stressful and may lead to conflict.  (It did with us!) Coaxing him to sit on the potty is counter-productive. Though catching a moment, when there is little resistance and showing a hesitant child that it’s ok to hang on the potty, can help dissolve anxiety, which has built up as a result of awkward attempts on your part to get him on it too often, too strongly, too everything.

We hit a low on day three. My husband, normally the one to calm and stabilize me in times of anxiety, lost it himself.  He said, “I just know that if he wanted to go on the potty, he could!” He was absolutely right.  Alex was physically ready.  But he was absolutely terrified of this unexpected change in his life. On day four things started coming together. It was time. He got the hang of managing his body; it had been long enough that he began getting used to the idea, and having had a good cry with me on the afternoon of day three, he was just kind of over it.

The most amazing thing is that he is so much happier using the potty than changing diapers! He just hated the process so much that the conflicts caused were a key reason for me to try.  I was getting tired of the constant power struggle in an otherwise cloud-free relationship with my son. Now he is the one in charge, and he loves it!

After we put the finishing touches on our potty training experience and I have more time to reflect, I would like to write a more serious summary of what I have come to believe through the experience.  For now, I am just relieved and happy.  Our new baby, Lily, is due to arrive in just under two months - so we didn’t do this a day too soon!