Toilet Training: Is Your Child Ready? (she: Heather)

Hello again, OSSS readers! It’s Heather from Family Volley. Today I want to approach the subject of toilet training. Toilet training our children can be one of the most challenging things we have to do. One of the reasons it is so hard, is because we often start training our children before they are ready. Regardless of the method you choose to use when you train, knowing if your child is ready is the first step.

Remember, our goal shouldn’t just be to get our children to go to the bathroom in the toilet and not in their pants, but to teach our children to go to the bathroom in the toilet by themselves. Here are a few simple tests that can help you gauge if your child is ready to be toilet trained. Most children 20 months and older are capable of being toilet trained. But remember, every child will be different. Three simple tests (Bladder Control, Physical Development, and Instructional Readiness) can help you assess if your child is ready.

Bladder Control

• Does your child urinate all at one time, or “dribble” in little bits at a time throughout the day?
• Can your child keep their pants dry for a few hours in a row?
• Does your child seem to know when they are about to go to the bathroom? Do they grab themselves, make a funny face, or gesture?

If your child does all three, then they have passed the bladder control tests. Even if they just pass test one and two, they could still be ready. Not all children give a visible sign they are about to go.

Physical Development

• Can your child walk from one room to another with ease and without help?
• Does your child have enough hand coordination to easily pick things up?

If your child answered yes to the above questions, then your child has enough physical development to be toilet trained.

Determine if your child can follow directions. If they can do most (5 or 6 of the 7) of the following, then they understand directions enough to be toilet trained.

• Ask your child to sit in a chair.
• Ask them to touch their nose, eyes, mother, and hair.
• Ask them to stand up
• Ask them to imitate you (imitate anything, you choose)
• Ask them to follow you to another room.
• Ask them to bring you an object
• Ask them to put the object with another object (such as their toy on the couch.)

If your child doesn’t pass the “Instruction Readiness Test”, you will want to continue to work with them before you toilet train. If your child is older and doesn’t pass the “instruction readiness test”, then it could be that they are being stubborn. If you know that they understand what you have said, but still refuse to carry out your instructions, you will want to address this problem before you begin to train them.

Every child is different, but the above “tests” can help us decide if our child is ready to toilet train. And save us the heartache of forcing children who are too young, or not ready, to start toilet training.

For more potty training tips, check out these posts: Potty Training Rescue, Sparking Potty Training Interest, Raising a Baby Diaper-Free