Baby Milestones Potty Training

Baby Milestones Potty Training

One of the most problematic characteristics of toilet training for many parents is the irregular pace at which different types of training occur. Your toddler may learn to urinate into a potty quite effortlessly but take it may take several more months to start having bowel movements there. Daytime training may have been a smooth transition for your toddler, but he remains to wet the bed recurrently through age five.

Since the order and promptness with which each of these skills is learned may vary from child to child, it is impossible to compare one child’s mastery with another’s to define whether your child’s progress is “normal.” In most cases, the best response to uneven adoption of skills is to remain persistent and understanding; giving your child the time and space he needs to take the next step toward complete attainment of toilet training.

Interruptions in bowel control can be mostly disturbing for many parents, however—especially when children show such puzzling behavior as clandestinely depositing bowel movements in a closet or other hiding place, smearing feces on the wall or other surface, or bursting into tears when their stool is flushed down the toilet.

On the contrary, toddlers are often tremendously proud of the product their bodies have created—expecting applause and admiration, not discontentment—and are unenthusiastic or even anxious at the prospect of letting these products go. This averseness can grow even stronger during periods when mastery of their body or secrecy becomes a high-priority issue in their lives, or when they are experiencing a fear of the potty or of some other aspect of bowel training that they are unable to articulate.

In utmost cases, hiding or playing with stool is a normal part of early childhood that will soon pass if you do not respond to it in a melodramatic way. Instead, calmly ask your child why he is behaving in this way, firmly remind him of the rules about where stool goes, and work to come up with a solution to his problem. You may find that your child is more willing to deposit his stool in the potty if he is then allowed to transfer it to the toilet and flush it himself. You may decide that it is necessary to monitor your child’s potty use until his interest in playing with his stools has passed.

In many cases, when your child’s health or other significant contemplations are not at stake, you may find that the best solution is to simply wait until your child matures. If so, you may find that what at first seemed an enormous gap between bladder and bowel training actually turned out to be no more than three or four weeks.

While nighttime bowel control occurs quite early and naturally in most children, bladder control usually happens much later—habitually months or even years after daytime training is complete—and requires conscious effort.  Bedwetting remains to be quite common through age five, and it usually does not need medical intervention until age eight to ten. Many children under age six are not physiologically capable of remaining dry at night, since their bladders have not appropriately matured and their bodies may not yet consistently wake them from sleep when it’s time to urinate.

Almost every child will experience at least a few nighttime bedwetting before the toilet-training process is truly complete.Since conflicts over such mishaps can easily spill over to cause resistance during the day, it is usually best to downplay night training through the toddler and even perhaps the preschool years. If your child is capable of constantly waking up to use the bathroom even at age two or three, count yourself lucky and allow him to do so. If accidents occur regularly, try keeping him in training pants or even a diaper at night for as long as he feels comfortable in them, and respond calmly to any accidents that occur.