My toddler (Babaganouski) is now showing all the signs of being ready for toilet training. The signs that I have picked up are:
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Comes and asks me to change me his nappy when it is wet or soiled.
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Can put his own pants on and off.
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Tells me he has done a wee or poo.
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Wants to stand and do a wee at the toilet with his brothers.
My other three children have all starting using a toilet at different ages, ranging from 2 years old to just before 3 years old. I have waited for not only the child to be ready, but for the timing to be right for me as well.
I have a pretty simple toilet training process that I have used with the other children that I will use again for my toddler. I also go into the toilet training with a flexible attitude – if I have judged the timing wrong, then I will be prepared to pull back if it looks like it is not working.
The toilet training process that I follow is like this:
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- Give the toddler some warning that we are going to stop wearing nappies soon and use a toilet.
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- Allow the toddler to have some time sitting on the toilet (we have one of those seats with steps that sits on the toilet) when they want to, so they can get used to how it feels.
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- Start the first day wearing underpants and only use nappies for sleep time from that point on.
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- Ensure that we have a few consecutive days when we are at home a lot or in an environment where it will be okay if there are accidents.
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- Ask the toddler regularly if they need to wee or poo.
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- Keep a closer eye on toddler, looking for signs that they need to use the toilet.
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- Endure a number of days of cleaning up wee and poo mishaps until it comes together for them.
Using this toilet training process I have found success within the week. Of course there is occasional accidents (especially when they are engrossed in an interesting activity) and times I will still need to remind the toddler to go to the toilet, but I have found they once they are free of nappies, they tend to get the process relatively quickly.
I am waiting until we start school holidays (Friday) before I start toilet training our toddler. Knowing that I was going to be revisiting this process, it was with great interest that I read an extract from Professor Joshua Gans new book “Parentonomics: An Economist Dad’s Parenting Experience“. The extract from Jans was published in the Sunday Life magazine from The Sunday Age. It detailed his experience of toilet training his little girl.
When Gans and his partner started the toilet training process, they immediately used jelly beans as “incentives. One for “number ones” and two for “number twos”. This worked for a while but eventually they needed to increase the incentive to chocolate frogs. Once this had happened they then found that their daughter had worked out how to manipulate the system (lots of frequent small toilet sessions) to increase her incentive intake. In the end they ceased using rewards and Gans concluded:
“the management process was painful and I can’t prove whether this wouldn’t have all happened of its own accord anyway, without rewards.”
I do have a business background in both theory and practice (which all seems so very long ago now!) and found it interesting that a Professor of Economics would overlook the importance of intrinsic vs extrinsic motivators in human behaviour.
When Mr I was completing his Masters in Business, he studied in detail concepts of motivating behaviour. When I starting to read about intrinsic motivation in parenting articles, we found it amusing how we were effectively studying the same aspects of human behaviour, just on very different age scales. I think using extrinsic motivators on any age group can be detrimental to the original aim and needs to be considered carefully before being initiated.
What has been your experience with toilet training your toddler and do you have any tips for success?
Postscript: I have just proof read this post and can’t quite believe that I have written a post that contains the words poo and wee so many times!
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Actually, it is a problem with abstracts. If you look at the whole chapter you will see that we paid lots of attention to different sources of motivations.
Having an older sibling as a positve role model can be helpful with toilet training. Key to the process as you pointed out, is that the child needs to be developmentally ready. We found using an insert for the toilet seat and a stool that enables them to get up and to rest their feet on, enabled them to use the toilet like everyone else in the family. This appeared to help with their motivation in making the change, as did having the opportunity to unravel metres of toilet paper around the floor if you were not watching.
I remember this time as a milestone in parenting. The next challenge was trying to get their bowels in a predictable, and ideally regular, routine to avoid untimely and unpleasant trips to public toilets for number 2s.
Keith Fitzpatricks last blog post..Early to Bed
I found it very helpful with both my girls to play pretend going to the toilet with a doll. One of those dolls that drinks and pees.
The whole process was much harder with Annie than it was with Heidi – surprisingly, you’d think the child with developmental delays would cause more headaches. With Heidi we used a special video from Autism Victoria which I think really helped. Heidi also wore cloth pull up style nappies which helped her to feel wet but minimised the mess factor.
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no tips at all here! lol
Toilet training was a nightmare with my oldest. Wasn’t accomplished till she was nearly 4 with any reliability.
The middle one toilet trained herself however and then toilet trained her brother too by simply taking him to the toilet with her whenever she went!
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I agree totally with intrinsic v extrinsic motivation! I’ve toilet trained my first child and I made all the mistakes – started a bit early, tried food rewards and got too frustrated. But I persevered and eventually the best and most effective technique was jumping up and down in total joy and excitement! (and can be used for all different situations!) Looking forward to tackling no 2 differently….
We still havent done overnight training – what are your thoughts/techniques to this?
Joshua – Thank you for commenting on the post. I acknowledge that there can be simplification issues when reading only an abstract.
My general philosophy in child rearing is to avoid extrinsic motivators to manipulate behaviour change in children, and as such disagree with the premise stated in the abstract that “The only question is, how much? What reward do you need to offer to get the behaviour you want?”.
Keith – I know what you mean about public toilets. We needed to use one today and I really didn’t want him to sit on the seat – it was in such a state!
Marita – Children can be so surprising! It was great that there was resources that you could use with Heidi.
Bettina – It is amazing how much difference their can be in children from the same family!
Alison – The first child has a lot of experimentation in our house too! I find I am always finding ways to do things better for next time.
With the exception of our child who wasn’t toilet trained until closer to three, tackling overnight training didn’t come until significantly later and up to a year for one of them and none of them before 3 y.o.
I didn’t attempt to do night training until they would have consecutive nights where they would wake up with dry nappies. It is really the physical ability to hold on all night that I was looking for.
We then just stopped using nappies, had the child use the toilet the last thing before they went to bed and hoped for the best! Success here is so dependent upon the right timing.
I am not looking forward to toilet training twin boys …they are almost ready.
They can remove nappies,clothes on /off and tell me about poos LOL – and they love the jelly beans I feed them sitting …ooops
They know how to work me already.I am going to re think the JB.
thanks for the advice.
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