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Every Child Is Different
Individual Tales from the Potty Training Trenches
By Kelly Burgess
Read all the books you want. Make all the plans you want. The fact is that all children are different when it comes to potty training, and what works for one may not work for the other. Who better to learn this from than parents who have been there, done that and learned a little something along the way? These parents are glad to pass along advice to those just entering the fray.
Karen Wright of Mankato, Minn., decided to go the route of "wait until they show interest." However, at 3, her son was showing no interest at all. Then his daycare center said he had to be trained in order to move up to the next level. Lucky for Wright, the center helped. They had her send him to school in underwear (along with several clothing changes), promising they'd take him to the potty every hour on the hour.
"The first day, he ended up with six sets of wet clothes," she says. "The second day, he came home with three pair, and by the third day, he'd only had a couple of accidents. Within a week, he was well on the way to being trained, with just an occasional accident over the next several months."
She followed the daycare's lead and took him to the potty every hour regardless of how loud his protests. As for her second child, now 8 months old, while she does plan to wait until he's ready, she'll take a more proactive approach of watching his cues (scrunched up face, crouching). She also hopes that having an older brother to lead by example will speed up the process.
