- Give the child control in other areas. The goal is to have them feel in control of their lives. Give them two choices of what to wear in the morning, let them choose. Let them choose what they want for lunch. Let them choose their vegetables. Let them choose what park you will play at, or the routine they would like to follow for bedtime. Let them choose the jobs they will do around the house or where they want to sit in the car. Give them opportunities to lead and to be in charge. As they begin to feel control over other aspects of their environment they will relinquish control of their bowls.
- Give your child more one-on-one attention. To a child who is seeking attention, it doesn’t matter if the attention comes from positive or negative actions, it is still attention. When a child does something wrong, even if you scold them, you have had to “deal” with them, you have paid attention to them. Set aside extra time to be with your child. Time everyday to play, with no restictions, or interuptions. Let your child choose what they want to do. Pretty soon the extra positive attention will help them let go of the need to gain attention by being unwilling to train, or by going in their pants. They wont need you to change their diaper to get attention because they will be getting plenty of attention in other ways.
Refer back to what we talked about last post with a stubborn child. If you have a child that is stubborn, use those techniques to deal with them before you try and train them.
What ages do you usually train your children?
Any success stories with this method?
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Ciara says
These are fantastic tips thank you. I have bookmarked for when I will start toilet training in a few weeks!
Amanda says
As a first time mommy of twins, I can use any suggestions I can get for my almost 2 year olds. My daughter is showing all sorts of potty-readiness signs. I don’t know if we just have different parenting styles, but components of Azrinn and Fox’s methods in the book you are recommending are outright cruel in my opinion! Having a child put on wet pants and march them back and forth to the potty after an accident is humiliating, demeaning, and just plain wrong. Dare I say abusive? As a former teacher (and therefore a mandated reporter for the state) I would feel obligated to report that sort of treatment to my principal and school social worker (and let them decide if we needed to place a welfare check call) if a child told me his parent did that to him.
I usually love your blog and was very excited that your recent posts were timed so well with my life, but I am beyond disappointed that the foundation for your suggestions is from such a twisted, disturbed set of authors. I am shocked and surprised, to say the least.
Heather Johnson says
Hi Ciara, thank you for your comment. Good luck with the training!
Hi Amanda, Thank you for your comment and opinion. I am sorry for any offense the post might have caused. Everyone has different opinions on mothering topics, thank you for sharing yours. I can understand your expressed concern. We have never approached the process with marching or humiliation. In fact “practicing” in our house has always been filled with laughing and silliness and fun reminders of how and when to run to the toilet. Regardless of the suggested method, I hope that the other tips about control and ways to help our children feel in control will be helpful during this stage in your parenting. Good luck with those twins. What an exciting adventure!
HELP!!! I tried to train my daughter (my oldest, so I’m new at this!) about 7 or 8 months ago (at 25 months old) using the potty training in less than a day methodology. While she had the process down, she just never got the idea of self-initiating. After 5 days of being ruled by the timer, I had enough and quit. I had my son 3 months after that, so I waited until he was 4 months old to try again. April 1st round 2 began, so it’s been just over a month. This time my daughter (at 32 months) is successfully self-initiating- most of the time… I just don’t know what to do. It seems she will go 2 or 3 days in a row with 0 day time accidents, but then she follows that up with another day or two that are bad. And when I say bad, I don’t mean just one accident, its usually 3 or 4 in a single day. I don’t understand because the previous days show that she clearly knows what to do and what the signals are and that she is capable of going potty completely unassisted, but then she has days where it’s like she’s never been trained at all. I had expectations of an accident here or there, isolated incidents, but this is beyond me. We don’t reward for every successful potty attempt, but we started doing stickers for entire dry days now (we aren’t even worried about nights yet since she doesn’t have days figured out, we just use pull-ups and she has had maybe 3 dry nights in total…). We started offering prizes for certain numbers of stickers/dry days. Smaller prizes if she happens to stay dry all night. But it doesn’t seem to be helping all that much. Do I go back to stickers every time and then try to phase them out again? We’ve been praising the successes a lot again, and she has to help clean up any failures. She doesn’t get to watch TV on days she has accidents because we tell her she needs to listen to her body better, and she can’t wear her favorite dress because we tell her it’s for big girls and we don’t want it to get yucky from accidents. Obviously, nothing has been effective and speak of the devil- after being dry all day yesterday, she just had an accident in her room and came out with pull-ups on. It’s so frustrating because she is so smart and we KNOW, literally KNOW she CAN do it, but half the time she just isn’t. It doesn’t seem like a power struggle, she’s eager to please. She gets to choose her clothes and her food and other things. I just don’t know what else to do!
I’m in the EXACT same boat (with the exception of a new(er) baby! congrats!) I am wondering what the response will be. You aren’t alone :)
heather,
thanks for posting this. perfect timing!
My question is this: Our daughter who shows signs in potty training is still in a crib. Is it counter productive to train and then put a pull-up at night? Thanks!
are there any possible products you can suggest or aids? my friend has mentioined brollysheets.co.uk? thanks