HOW TO POTTY TRAIN A CHILD?
Some mothers try to potty train their baby as early as possible in order to quickly get rid of the extra laundry and expenses for diapers. Others put off potty training until a later date.
Every well-read mother knows when children usually begin to crawl, when to walk, when to talk. But when potty training occurs as easily as possible, few people know.
It happens that months of torment and constant struggle pass, and then, once again, in a few days the child learns to go to the potty. Mom sighs with relief: “Finally, I taught you!”
What really happened? It's just one of those "mystery" periods of natural potty training.
I won’t bore you, I’ll get straight to the point. I immediately apologize for the too detailed explanation of the physiology of the child; without this, the article would not make sense.
I'll start with the most common question,
When to potty train?
Voluntary retention of urination and defecation develops from six months to one year of a child’s life. During this period, the child actively studies his body and its capabilities. For example, he can pee and pat the puddle with his palms, he can carefully observe the process, and then examine the contents of the pot.
The baby plays, voluntarily holding urination. This trains his ability to regulate urination.
At this time, you can begin to invite the baby to sit on the potty, but rather to get to know him, and not for regular natural functions. Most likely, it will not be possible to develop a stable skill of using the potty at this age of an active baby, since he cannot yet sit in one place for a long time. But with a calm baby it can work.
During the so-called “one-year crisis” (10-13 months), the child strives for greater independence and may rebel against the prohibitions and coercions of adults. Including against using a potty.
Therefore, during this period, many children refuse to sit on the potty, even if they have been accustomed to it.
And after the end of the “one year crisis” (from approximately 14 months), you can already teach your child to consciously use the potty independently.
During potty training, you will most likely not be able to avoid the occasional puddle.
But with 2-year-old children than with very young children, because they already understand speech, and you can explain to them where and why they need to go to the toilet, and therefore puddles can be avoided or their number reduced to a minimum. In addition, at this age, kids are actively interested in toilet matters.
Of course, all figures are approximate, since the development of each individual child may differ from the statistical average.
In the matter of potty training (as in other issues of child development), it is necessary to focus not on numbers, but on the child’s behavior.
Suppose the favorable moment has come and you decide to slowly start teaching your child to use the potty.
Why on the sly? You can speed up this process. And do this not forcefully, but gently and naturally. Read on...
Where to start potty training your child
If, in the opinion of the parents, the baby is already sufficiently ready for potty training, then you can proceed directly to this process.
Dr. Komarovsky believes that first, mom and dad need to answer the question for themselves: are they ready to develop this important skill in their beloved child? The fact is that the transition from diapers to potty takes a long time and requires a lot of effort from parents. You need to constantly monitor the baby and pay much more attention to him. You cannot develop such a skill by working with a little person only in the evenings or on weekends. This is exactly what you need to be mentally prepared for.
It is better to start potty training in the warm season. The logic here is obvious: in the summer the baby wears less clothes, which means the process of getting rid of them goes much faster. In addition, if something doesn’t work out for the baby, then you will have to wash much less things than in winter.
In addition to the season, one must also take into account the general condition of the baby. Evgeniy Olegovich does not recommend starting potty training during periods when the baby is overbalanced, capricious, or simply in a bad mood. And the nervousness of parents in this matter is also a bad help. It is better to wait until all family members are healthy and happy.
How to quickly potty train a child?
The easiest way to learn to use a potty is for children who did not wear diapers (their mothers dropped them off); for them, the process of training occurs quickly and without puddles. But all is not lost for “diaper” children, you just have to endure puddles and piles on the floor (and in other places) for a while.
Here are recommendations that, if followed, will allow you to speed up the training process as much as possible:
- If your child spent all his time in diapers before potty training, you will have to remove them. Why? The baby must study his body to know what the butt and genitals are for.
- He must establish a connection between urges and the following impulses. To do this, he must see the act of urination and defecation. And more than once.
o It is necessary to show by example when and how to use the potty.
To do this you need to watch the child. You will notice that before he relieves himself, he shows dissatisfaction or calms down (strains, groans), and at this moment you offer the baby a potty. It’s good if the child also sees from the example of adults or older children where and how the need is dealt with.
- A naked baby won't have to take anything off to sit on the potty.
For example, I started training my “diaper” child in this way at 1 year and 8 months. Two weeks later he sat on the potty by himself for the first time, and a week later he was already using it for its intended purpose without any reminder. All this time he was running naked, and I was running with a mop. But the result was worth it! There was no coercion, everything happened naturally!
It takes different amounts of time for each child to learn to go potty on their own without being told.
The older the child is and the more time he spends naked, the shorter the potty training time.
That is, to potty train a one-year-old baby, it will take a month or two, and a 2-year-old – a week or two.
A little about physiology
Dr. Komarovsky explains an important fact - the timing of the formation of reflexes in babies is individual .
It is not uncommon for a child under three years old to be unable to ask to go potty.
How physiological processes are formed:
- The natural transition to controlling discharge begins at one year and continues throughout the second year.
- The optimal start of the skill is from one year ten months to two years six months.
- We can talk about stable formation of the reflex by the beginning of three years of life.
Some parents try to develop the reflex before the age of one year, for example, by voicing the child’s urination with the words “pee-pee.” After many attempts, this works out, but Dr. Komarovsky emphasizes that the baby lacks conscious control at this age.
What can happen if a parent actively potty trains a child before one year of age?
In the second year of life, all efforts made may be in vain, as the child begins to refuse to sit on the potty.
The time has come for natural control over the processes of excretion; the maturing one-year-old toddler does not want to disembark when his parents force him to “pee-pee”.
He feels like his bladder is empty and he is being forced to. Hence the protests, puddles on the carpet or in the corner of the room.
At what age should a child be potty trained, according to Komarovsky? The doctor advises focusing on the child’s psychological readiness when potty training.
Therefore, the recommended period for starting to become familiar with proper toileting starts at one year and lasts up to three years. It is necessary to take into account the individual characteristics of the child.
The desired time for potty training a child varies over a fairly wide age range - from 1 year to 3 years.
Successful training will depend on three factors. These include:
- Development of organs: bladder, rectum, abdominal muscles.
- Development of the nervous system.
- Pedagogical observation, activity of close relatives.
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Let's take a closer look at when you should try to teach your child to go potty and how to understand whether he is ready for this.
How to refuse a diaper on the street?
Some time after developing a stable skill in using the potty, you can teach your baby to do without a diaper outside. Best in the warm season.
Usually, babies who did not wear disposable diapers, by the time they are potty trained, already know how to ask and even endure the entire walk.
Children with diapers will also be fine, but you will have to remove the diaper before going for a walk and stock up on a pack of spare pants.
Here are recommendations on how to proceed:
- Before your walk, encourage your child to go potty. If he doesn't want to, don't insist.
- If you don’t want to go into the bushes, then take a pot with you.
- Don't forget to bring several pairs of pants (and maybe socks).
- Every time after an “accident” on a walk, gently explain to your child what happened: “Sunny, you peed your pants! Look, they're wet! Let’s go potty next time (water the grass)!” And after that, change the child's clothes.
- If the baby asks, praise and affectionately hug the baby or pat him on the head so that the child has pleasant emotions.
- After your walk, encourage your child to go potty.
After a while, the child will begin to tolerate the entire walk. And you won't have to carry a potty and spare clothes with you.
How to refuse a night diaper?
After some time of developing a stable potty habit, your baby will also wake up at night to go to the potty. And then you can do without a diaper at night.
For those babies who did not wear disposable diapers, this happens at an earlier age.
Usually, by the age of 2 years, the function of urinary retention is so strengthened that it begins to manifest itself during sleep, and the child stops waking up at night to go to the toilet.
to train a small child to sleep through the night without peeing. A person cannot control himself during sleep.
The only thing that can be done is to offer the child to go to the potty before bed.
Is it necessary to wake up a child at night to go potty - Komarovsky
Very often, parents suffer from the problem of bedwetting in children of different ages and wonder: is it necessary to wake up the child at night to go potty? Will “sitting” on the potty at night help to cope with the problem, will the child begin to wake up on his own, feeling the urge to urinate? Until what age is nighttime “peeing on the bed” considered normal, and when is it time to go to the doctor?
Let's figure out the problem.
What is nocturnal enuresis
Nocturnal enuresis is when a child does not wake up to go to the potty, feeling the urge to urinate, but pees directly into the bed.
The famous Ukrainian pediatrician Dr. Komarovsky identifies the following types of enuresis:
- primary enuresis - when the child has wet himself and continues to do so;
- secondary - when a child does not wet the bed at night for some time, and then, due to some kind of stress or problem, begins to wet himself again.
Very often, parents scold their child for peeing.
What a child does in a dream has nothing to do with his character or psyche. He is not to blame for this in any way and therefore he cannot be punished for this, says Dr. Komarovsky.
If a child is constantly scolded and told how bad he is for peeing in the bed, then he will really begin to develop psychological problems.
What is the reason
The reason is not the soundness of sleep, says Dr. Komarovsky; even a soundly sleeping child should wake up at night to go potty.
Evgeniy Olegovich also urges that mothers should not look for the cause of nocturnal enuresis in long-term wearing of diapers. This problem has nothing to do with diapers.
This is the immaturity of the nervous system that regulates the process of urination, and with age, the nervous system will normally improve, and you just need to wait.
Out of a thousand children,” notes Dr. Komarovsky, “at most one child has real problems associated with the bladder or nervous system; in the rest, this problem goes away on its own with age.
At what age should you start sounding the alarm?
Faced with the problem of nocturnal enuresis in their child, many mothers begin to study various forums and articles on the Internet and find information that the situation of “peeing on the bed” before the age of 4 is considered normal. Moms grab their heads and run to the doctors if the child is already 5 years old and he still pees in bed at night.
However, Dr. Komarovsky believes that normally a child should learn to control the situation during the day before the age of 4, and at night until the age of 6. But with age, the situation should change for the better, that is, if at 4 years old a child has 20 dry nights, then a miss, and at 5 years old - 22 dry nights in a row, then this is good.
How to help your child
Dr. Komarovsky identifies the following ways to help with nocturnal enuresis in children:
1. Motivational therapy, that is, the child must really want to get rid of it. Properly organized motivational therapy is effective in 80% of cases. That is, you need to motivate the child, offer something for a dry night, for example a ticket or sticker, and, for example, for 5 stickers/tickets go and buy a toy.
“Until the child himself is more interested than the parents in making sure this goes away, no method of treating enuresis will help,” says Dr. Komarovsky.
2. Reducing the amount of fluid you drink in the afternoon can reduce the likelihood of bedwetting, but this will not solve the problem. 40% of the daily fluid volume should be drunk before 12 o'clock, another 40% - before 17 o'clock, 20% - after 17 o'clock, but this last drink should be decaffeinated, that is, no tea or coffee.
3. Bladder training. Ask your child to wait another minute when he wants to go potty. This will help increase your bladder capacity.
4. Using a special device - a urinary alarm clock. Its essence lies in the fact that a special sensor is placed in the underpants, which, when liquid gets on it, causes a ringing or vibration of the alarm clock attached to it. Thus, when starting to write, the child wakes up from the alarm, turns it off and goes to finish peeing on the potty.
5. “Putting” the child on the potty at night when the alarm clock rings. For example, a mother knows that the child wants to write at 2 am, she sets the alarm clock for half past one in the morning, every day the alarm time can be shifted by half an hour. But directly solving the problem so that the child learns to feel the urge to urinate and wakes up to go to the potty will not solve it. This will also just help keep the bed dry.
We also raised the topic of potty training a child earlier.
