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Wed 30 Jul, 2003 03:39 pm
Early toilet training is coming back in style, according to Pam Kelly a feature writer for the Knight-Ridder Newspaper chain.
MATTHEWS, N.C. | If you've ever struggled to toilet-train a preschooler, Karry Laney's recent accomplishment might seem as monumental as a cure for the common cold.
Laney has trained her 6-month-old grandson to use the toilet. He's been doing it since he was 10 weeks old.
''I started working with him, and within two days, he started wee-weeing and doing No. 2 in the commode,'' said Laney, 56, who lives next door to her daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren.
Laney used a method that parents in some Asian and African countries have used for centuries. U.S. child-rearing manuals from the late 19th and early 20th centuries also recommended infant potty training, though it fell out of favor in the 1930s. Today, the practice is making a small resurgence, thanks to several recent publications on the subject.
Laney, who grew up on a cotton farm in Lancaster, S.C., wasn't aware of the history of the practice. She trained her grandson, Adam Bytheway, because she'd learned the method from her mother.
Basically, infant potty training requires a caregiver to observe a baby's body language and take cues from the child. Experts say it's best to start between birth and about 5 months old. When the child is likely to go ?- first thing in the morning, or after a feeding, for instance ?- the caregiver gently holds the child over a toilet, basin or sink. Some practitioners recommend making a water sound, like ''ssss.'' Laney likes to say, ''Go wee-wee for Granny.''
''The idea is you try to get there just before they need to go,'' said Laurie Boucke, author of ''Infant Potty Training.''
It might take a few tries, but at some point, the child will go to the bathroom. The caregiver praises the child, and soon the child learns to associate the sound and the toilet with elimination. Caregivers are never to scold or pressure the child.
Often, babies learn to vocalize or grunt to let parents know they need to use the toilet. Once they're mobile, some even crawl to the toilet to announce their intentions.
Adam grunts and frowns to alert his family that he needs to have a bowel movement, but Laney also takes him to the toilet at least every couple of hours.
Laney learned about infant potty training because her mother trained Laney's daughter, Lisa Bytheway, to go to the bathroom in a Luzianne coffee can. On a farm with no indoor plumbing and no washing machine, such a method was almost a necessity.
But the practice got a bad name in the 1930s, Boucke said, after some parents took an overly regimented approach, strapping their babies in potty chairs and scolding them when they didn't perform.
By the '50s and '60s, child-rearing experts such as Benjamin Spock and T. Berry Brazelton were advocating a relaxed approach, advising parents to follow their children's lead. Washing machines and disposable diapers made that advice easier to follow.
Today, U.S. children tend to train later than they did a few decades ago. A 1997 study found 60 percent trained by age 3, 88.5 percent by age 31/2 .
When Laney's first grandchild was born more than 11 years ago, she decided to potty-train her with the method she recalled her mother using.
When Adam came along, she used it again. He caught on quickly.
Those who advocate infant potty training say most babies can achieve reasonable control between 12 and 18 months. The practice cuts down on diaper use, saves money and is environmentally friendly, they say.
Adam still wears a diaper, and he soils it sometimes, but his mom, Lisa, said she has used diapers so sparingly that those she received as baby-shower gifts lasted nearly six months.
Laney advises parents to begin when the babies are about a month old, never force them and offer lots of praise.
''It's a lot easier than to keep changing them over and over,'' she said. ''You're saving money, and you don't have the frustration of trying to train them when they're 1 or 2, and they have a mind of their own.''
Copyright © 2003, The Morning Call
Personally I think that the mother or grandmother is trained. What do you think?
I'm not sure about 10 weeks, but I don't see any benefit in waiting til they're 18 or 24 months. It's clear that toileting is something a child can do long before that. It makes sense to begin encouraging them as soon as possible. You can take a toilet-trained child a lot of places a non-potty-trained child isn't welcome, or where it wouldn't be convenient.
I say more power to the early trainers. It's definitely in line with what my mother's friends talked about having done with their children during and after WWII - when they were refugees, and there weren't a lot of diaper-type resources.
oh yeah - i'm also speaking from the perspective of someone who has changed a lot of diapers, and toilet-trained 2 children about 25 years ago.
My mother tried this with me when I was about 10 months old. I steadfastly refused for the longest time. It was simply no fun to use the cold plastic bowl, none of the warmth or comfort of the previous method (though when it become cold it was quite uncomfortable).
But when I discovered that the potty served as an excellent, if noisy, method of transportation I was immediately convinced and every day I had my own Odyssey (think starirs). I liked it so much that the tall stationary one with the gaping hole was hard to convince me to take up (I think it was with the press release of the Segway that I finally decided that the scooting around wasn't cool or funny anymore).
How appropriate that baby Stewie (Stewie?) appears for this one. Sozlet again wants to know why he is crying. I promised I would ask.
(Busy now, will come back to this. Interesting.)
Sigh, this reminded me of potty training quotes from Stewie. I;ll go post ém on a separate thread so as to allow this one to get back O.T.
I guess the 'when' of it isn't as important as the 'how' of it.
The modern, very very very absorbent disposable makes it too easy for everyone to dodge the bullet on training. The kids are comfortable - the parents don't have to try - just wait.
A lot of my friends are now being told by their paediatricians not to use disposables. The word on the paediatricians jungle drum seems to be that they delay toilet training too long which apparently causes other problems. I think the record among my circle is a girl who was trained in 5 days after disposables were taken out of service. She was 16 months old. Her brother did it in 2 full weeks at the same age. The doctor was apparently surprised he lasted that long. Stubborn little bugger. The parents have told me that they need to be home for about 2 weeks and completely on the ball for it to work. Watch for grunting/straining etc - underpants only - so lots of mop work for about a week.
One thing I have learned from my own experience and from a lot of discussions with moms IRL and on discussion boards is that there just aren't any one-size-fits-all guarantees when it comes to parenting methods/ advice. A lot of people on that parenting board tried the "Elimination Communication" method, which seems to be the same thing (baby communicates that they need to go, etc.), and many have failed miserably. The consensus seems to be that there is an unrealistic expectation that the kids should be able to do it -- some can, some can't. When the ones that can't are pressured, it opens up a whole huge can of worms. It becomes a giant power struggle, guilt and shame become a prominent feature, and the kid isn't fully potty trained until they are 4 or 5 or 6. (!) I can get some of the specific stories if anyone is interested.
This wasn't really on our radar when the sozlet was that young, though on my own (not due to advice from any quarter) I got her a potty when she was still very little (somewhere between a year and 18 months) and praised her up and down when she used it. Didn't rush anything, she is now almost completely potty trained -- uses underwear during the day, pullups at night, but those have been consistently dry for a while and so we can probably go to the next step. (Went to underwear step a couple of months ago.)
I think one of the biggest problems in parenting is when people lacking instincts or confidence get some sort of advice and feel that they MUST do it, even if it doesn't feel right. Then when they force the issue, it causes bigger problems. I think these kinds of people can mess up either early toilet training of this type or over-use of disposables/ not bothering. But I think it takes instinct/ keen observational skills to know which is best for a specific child.
Oh and I agree with the comment that the mother or grandmother is the one who is trained.
Ok, so, what are the problems for waiting until the comfy-diapered kid is ready? I'm curious. Both girls I care for wore the super absorbant and comfy diapers. Both were introduced to the idea of potty training at about 2.5 years. The older of the 2 went through it start to finish (through the night w/o diapers) in about 2 weeks maybe. The younger one hasn't got very trainable parents. She is still, after 1.5 months or so, wearing diapers half the time.
I can't speak of own children, only of nieces, nephews, God-children and what else I know.
But I'm really quite surprised, how late they do this in the USA!
(One for reasons we do it here in Germany earlier is that children have to be trained before they can go in the kindergardens (which is at the age of three or earlier, when wanted).
My First Mother-in-Law told me that her precious baby boykins had been totally and completely potty trained at 3 months. I had noticed that my First Mother-in-Law had a very elastic idea of truth.
Further, I was toilet training kids in the early sixties when there were no disposable diapers and Dr. Spock advocated "wait until they are ready". I went along with Dr. Spock on toilet training.
Meanwhile, I was teaching my soggy-bottomed boys colors and by-the-way counting and nursery rhymes and ethical behavior and manners....
Finally at 3 I decided that perhaps my older son was "ready" whether he knew it or not and started making all the right moves. He might have been ready--but he certainly wasn't interested until his younger brother, a highly competitive 18 month old, advanced to training pants and then dry nights.
I went from two-in-diapers to No Diapers. Bliss.
Boys seem to have less body awareness than girls--or more ability to ignore body functions--take your pick.
well my sig. other's son's kid wants to be toilet trained. he is 2.25. he had nwanted to start for several months. but the mother of the child thinks it is too soon. why?
Maybe I was lucky, but I potty trained both my boy and girl around 13 months, they were walking so it was seemed like the right time.
I used fruit loops, never fed them the stuff, just used it for target practice.
There is nothing sadder than a 4/5 years old in diapers. I find it quite repulsive actually.
But, yeah I have to agree with the grandmother being the one who's trained. I have friends from asia, Veitnam to be precise, and the reason many kids are trained there so early is that it's just too hot and humid to leave a kid in a diaper.
ceili
wow! that sounds awfully young to be trained! most people would give their eye teeth to see their kids trained so early.
i don't understand my sig. other's exdaughterinlaw not wanting to potty train him now when he shows interest.
I can understand potty training them early if you're home all the time, but if you work? Who would take their two weeks' vacation to follow a toddler around, cleaning carpets & floors all day? The daycares can't afford enough workers to keep up with that method, either. Imagine one worker and 6-10 kids!
My experience was very typical. My son showed some interest in the big potty when he was about 18 months old. He didn't want to use it himself, just wanted to flush the lever. We let him do that for us, and even bought him a little potty chair and encouraged him to use it, but his interest was gone in about a week. A little before his third birthday, his daycare worker told me he was interested again and suggested trying regular underwear over the weekend. I talked to him about it, made it a really big deal, then we went to K-Mart and bought some special Batman "big boy" underwear. I told him there were only three pair in the package, so if he got all three of them dirty, it was back to pull-ups. He trained himself in about a week.
My mother thought that was late. She had trained us when we were about 2, but admitted it was very difficult. She said it was hard enough to keep up with the average 2 yr. old Tasmanian devil (as she put it) without trying to toilet train them, too!
gingy, I don't have enough info but I think that perhaps your SO's exDIL (now that's convoluted!
) might feel that while he's interested, he's not actually ready. The parenting board I referred to is rife with stories of kids who refuse to wear anything but underwear, BUT are not actually potty trained, so the parents are just going around cleaning up after them all the time.
I'm pretty happy with how it's gone for us. I realized that according to the criteria in this article, the sozlet has been "potty trained" for a very long time, in terms of going in the potty often enough that diaper use was cut down significantly. But I consider "potty trained" to be wandering around in underwear and clothes, and then either a) going to the potty herself, successfully removing underwear and clothes first or b) telling me that she has to go, and successfully waiting until I've helped her on the potty (at a store for example) and helped her with her clothes.
At any rate, it's been a smooth process (knock on wood), she is proud of herself, we're proud of her, there aren't any big guilt or power things going on.
sozobe
to clear up coonfusion. my sig other is divorced himself for 25 years now. but he and his ex did have a son.
anyway. i think the potty training will begin. this daughter in law has basket outside her apartment door for peopel to leave shoes in. she doensn't want shoes in the house. the child has started to pretend he is doing "poo poo" in the this basket. he wants a red poddy. so she is finally going to get one. if she can't find a red one. she may paint a wood one red.
Hi all. New here.
What is described in this thread sounds like elimination communnication(cooky name I know) and can be started at birth. It's not really training, just learning the cues your babe makes when they have to eliminate waste. I haven't read much into it, but I think the idea is to get the child in-tune with their bodies that they will not eliminate until they heard or feel a certain association(praise, cooing, or another association word used only at the potty). So, the parents or caregiver may be the one who is trained at first, but after repetition, the child becomes more in control.
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