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Home › Articles › Toilet Training › Toilet Training Your Child

Toilet Training Your Child

Just the Basics, Please

By Jessica Williams

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Ask a seasoned parent about toilet training and you're likely to be met with a grimace. With the obvious dislike most parents have when it comes to cleaning up after "accidents," many parents can think of about a hundred different things they'd rather do. Then again, many parents followed (or tried to follow) the "old school" rules-primarily, that a child should begin training at the age of 2.

Nowadays, however, you may encounter more and more parents who are following a different training path. Instead of going by the calendar, these parents are letting their toddler lead the way...and finding surprising results. After getting over the initial fear that their child will go off to kindergarten in a diaper, many parents are happier using this child-led training method.

Watching your child's signals and taking small steps toward the potty or toilet is still a controversial idea, despite the American Academy of Pediatrics' (AAP) approval. But, as is the case with many other parenting issues that were once deemed "controversial," old habits (and viewpoints) die hard. To make it easier, we are going to highlight ideas and suggestions laid out by the AAP in their toilet training guidelines for parents. While other methods may not stray too far from these guidelines, we'd like to stick to the core idea behind the process.

First, it is important to let go of the idea that children are potty trained at the age of 2. This is a vague statement, and it's also not the norm. In truth, only four percent of 482 healthy toddlers studied in 1997 were trained by their second birthday, according to the AAP. Contrary to the popular misconception, most of these children did not train until they were between 3 and 3 c years old.


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