Quick Facts About Potty Training
Are you and your family starting the process of potty training with your little one and you aren't quite sure where to start? Elizabeth Pantley has the answers for you, straight from her new book "The No-Cry Potty Training Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Child Say Good-Bye to Diapers."
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 18 to 32 months. Pre-potty training preparation can begin when a child is as young as 10 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 2 1/2 and 4.
- It takes 3 to 12 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.
- 98 percent of children are completely daytime independent by age 4.
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.
About the author: Elizabeth Pantley is the author of several books, including "Gentle Baby Care : No-cry, No-fuss, No-worry -- Essential Tips for Raising Your Baby," "The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night," "Kid Cooperation" (with an introduction by William Sears, MD), "Perfect Parenting," as well as her latest "The No-Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers and Preschoolers" and is also president of Better Beginnings, Inc. She is a popular speaker on family issues, and her newsletter, Parent Tips, is seen in schools nationwide. She appears as a regular radio show guest, and has been quoted in "Parents," "Parenting," "Redbook," "Good Housekeeping," "American Baby," "Working Mother," and "Woman's Day" magazines. Visit Elizabeth's web site http://www.pantley.com/elizabeth.
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Member Comments On...
Quick Facts About Potty Training
4 |
No harm in starting right away, my daughter has been trained since 18 mos. and it's been so much easier for both of us.
10 |
I'm most glad to see "age 4" mentioned here. Hamlet will be 4 in July. Has no interest in the potty. None. We haven't pushed at all, just "gently guided" and he just plain isn't ready. I'm hoping when he is ready, he'll be done within a week!
7 |
My biggest problem was that each child was ready for preschool at age 3, but not necessarily perfect with the potty. I know I worried about it too much and put too much pressure on them.
