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Every Child Is Different
Individual Tales from the Potty Training Trenches
By Kelly Burgess
Having an older sibling to model potty behavior is great, but sometimes an adult of the same sex is just as good – maybe better.
"I have a 6-year-old daughter, and her potty training experience was completely fueled by her desire to be just like Mommy," says Chuck Casto of Sudbury, Mass. "She followed Mommy into the bathroom every time she could and simply mimicked her."
What Castro learned? Don't put too much pressure on the child. Coincidentally, Castro does PR for CSN Stores, an eclectic online retailer. What he's learned from his job is that if he has a boy, he's going to invest in a little item called the Peter Potty. It's a child-sized urinal that teaches boys to pee standing up without the mess or frustration of using the "big" toilet.
Working mother Kari Moe Straley of San Francisco, Calif., says her daughter was ready for potty training long before she was. "[My daughter] was actually expressing interest in the potty before she turned 2, but I was afraid of accidents so I kept a Pull-Up on her until about 3 months ago," she says. "Once we stopped with the Pull-Ups she was pretty much potty trained in a few days."
Straley thinks talking about the potty and reading books about the potty really helped her daughter to become interested.
One might expect that Dr. Gwenn Schurgin O'Keeffe, CEO of Pediatrics Now, would be an expert on all things potty relate. After all, she's not just a mom – she's a pediatrician! And yet regrets, she's had a few.