Tag Archives: toddler

A Tale of Three Potty-Training Experiences

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On every online parenting forum, you’ll see parents who post questions about potty-training, and other parents leap in to share their experiences. The wise ones say “here’s how it worked for me, but your experience may be different.” But that message can get drowned out in the over-achievers: “just do it MY way, and it will go great” and the exhausted: “nothing I’m trying is working.”

For a first-time inexperienced parent, it can feel overwhelming. It may feel like “I don’t know what the right answer is!!” And the answer is that there is no one right answer. Like all things with our children, what works depends on: their temperament, our temperament, their motivation to learn and our motivation to teach, plus circumstances in our environment. Disabilities and neurodiversity also play a role.

As a parent educator, I’ve read countless books and articles, and talked to countless parents about this process. I’ve summarized my best advice in this one-page summary. I also address the 20% of kids who refuse to poop in the potty.

In this post, I’ll share stories from my personal experiences of how this can play out. I have three different children, and three different potty-training journeys, so I’m definitely not telling you any “one right answer” here!

Child #1: At a fairly young age (probably around 2), she could keep her diaper dry for hours. She could pee in the potty when I put her there. She could poop in the potty. She had good body awareness, so knew when she was doing something. So, all the skills were in place. But… she lacked motivation. She was a child who was very engaged in her play – she had an incredibly long attention span where she would stay focused on one activity for a very long time. She didn’t like transitioning from her chosen activity to other activities. So, if she was in the middle of something and needed to poop, she’d just do it there in her diaper. She didn’t want to interrupt her play to go to the potty. To you as an adult, hat may seem like a strange choice to make, but remember that toddlers are used to using their diaper and don’t find it uncomfortable or weird.

Sometimes she needed to pee badly enough that she was rocking her bottom back and forth, but if we asked her if she needed to use the potty, she’d just say “I fine. I fine.” In other words “leave me alone – I have more important things to do than go to the potty.” I think we tried some motivational things along the way like stickers, but it wasn’t enough. So, when she was 3, I bought a cool dollhouse and some fabulous big girl underwear. I put them in the closet, showed them to her, and said “whenever you’re ready to start using the potty ALL the time, you can have these. But once you have these, we’re not going back, OK? It will be no more diapers from then on. So, you decide when you’re ready for that.” I closed the closet and walked away. She immediately went to use the potty, and was potty-trained from that moment forward. Now again, remember this was a child who already had all the skills in place to make this move! This was just the final motivation to commit to a new way of toileting, even if that meant interrupting her play.

Child #2: She pretty much trained herself. We were busy and didn’t have a lot of time to worry about it, or nag her about it, but it just happened. She’d follow us into the bathroom and follow her sister into the bathroom, so she knew how it all worked. As she got older, she’d pull down her own clothes and sit on the potty, and was soon peeing into it successfully. We talked about it, and praised her for it, but it wasn’t a big deal. We didn’t require that she use the potty, but she generally chose to do so, and I think she totally gave up diapers at around 2 years 9 months.

I think part of this was having a big sister to watch. But, a big part of it was her temperament. She was (and is) an independent child who likes to be seen as mature and competent and doesn’t like to burden others. She liked taking care of her own needs.

Child #3. When he was 2.5 years old, we thought we were on the verge of potty training. His bladder control was perfect. He could keep his diaper dry for hours until he got to a potty. He was dry overnight. He wasn’t pooping in the potty yet, but we figured that would come soon.

He finally pooped in the potty for the first time a year later at 3.5 years old!

He had one week of doing it consistently. Then he stopped.

The next time he pooped in the potty was a year after that. He was 4.5 years old!

In that full two year period, he had perfect bowel control and predictable bowel patterns. He would choose to poop in his diaper every afternoon, when he was alone for naptime. We enrolled him in a morning preschool that required potty training, and we explained our circumstances. We told them that they would never need to deal with it, and sure enough, he never peed or pooped in his diaper at preschool the whole year. He saved it till he was home for nap time.

Why wouldn’t he poop in the potty? I wish I knew! We tried to figure out if it was fear or aversion or if he’d had a painful poop that scared him or what. We never knew. We tried to motivate him in a lot of ways. We tried offering stickers and candy and so on. But, although he would sit on the potty for us, no poop ever came out. We gave him privacy, we tried to help him feel safe. We tried having him sit on the potty with his diaper on to see if he could poop if the diaper was on. Nothing worked. You just can’t get someone to poop on command. When he reached 4.5 we started having occasional success which we rewarded and praised. We went on a road trip, and were afraid we would lose progress when we were away from home, but instead, that was when he finally potty trained. We did give him rewards for each poop, but I don’t think that was the reason he did it. I think he was just finally ready to do it, and the rewards were a nice perk.

By a few weeks after that, he was pretty much independent. He knew when he needed to pee or poop. If we were out of the house, he’d ask to use the potty. At home, he’d just go use it on his own whenever he needed it. He didn’t wipe himself, so that was still a learning process to go through. But huge progress at the end of a long marathon.

By temperament, he is a child who thrives on routine, and likes to do things the same way every time. So, I think he had a routine for his bowel movements and it was working for him, and it was hard for him to change to a new way of doing things. (When he got older, he was diagnosed with autism. He’s a very bright kid with strong language skills and a fair grasp of social skills, so you might not peg him as autistic, but one of the ways it manifests is that he has a really hard time with change. Here’s some advice I found later on about potty training a child with autism.)

So, we’ve tried child-led potty training, we’ve tried sticker charts, we’ve done gradual, we’ve done “Big Day”, we’ve tried a wide variety of methods. But our success depended not so much on what we did as the parents, but on our individual children and what worked for them. The best recommendation I have for other parents is: collect advice. Try the things that feel like they match your preferences and your child’s personality. If they work, keep doing them. If they don’t work, take a break for a month or so. Try not to stress about it. Try again with a new approach when you feel like you can do it in a non-stressed and supportive manner. Try not to lose faith along the way. You’ll get there eventually!

For more info, read my one-page summary of potty training, or the long version all the options for potty training. Or read about kids who refuse to poop in the potty.

Car Seats – ready for the next level?

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Motor vehicle accidents are a major cause of child injury, and the second leading cause of child death in the U.S. Proper use of the proper car seat can hugely reduce the risks for your child. There are four stages of car safety restraints. To choose the right level for your child, it is more important to consider their height and weight than their age. To maximize safety, keep your child in each level of seat as long as possible, until they reach the maximum height and weight for that seat. Each stage provides less protection. Don’t move your child to the next stage until you have to.

Rear-Facing. (Birth to age 2 or beyond) Infant Seat: Weight up to 22 – 35 pounds and height up to 29 – 32 inches, depending on the seat. Convertible Seat: Weight up to 45 pounds, maximum height 40 inches for rear-facing or larger in some select seats. American Academy of Pediatrics says children should ride rear-facing until they are at least 2 years of age, and then until they reach the highest weight or height allowed by the manufacturer of their seat. Riding rear-facing reduces the risk of severe injury by 75%.

Forward-Facing Car Seat with a 5-point Harness. (Age 2 – 7 or beyond). Maximum weight 40 – 90 pounds. Maximum height up to 50 inches. When you install a seat forward facing, be sure to use the tether strap to secure the top as well as buckling in the base.

Booster Seat. (Age 4 – 10) Up to 100 – 120 pounds. From 34 – 63”. Children should be mature enough to sit properly in a booster and not play with the seat belt. Washington State requires kids to use a child safety seat until they are at least 8 years old or taller than 4’9”, whichever comes first.

Seat Belt. (Age 8 – 12) If your child is 8 – 12 years old and at least 4 feet 9 inches tall, AND you can answer yes to these questions, then they’re ready to move out of a booster seat.

  • When child is sitting back in seat, do his knees bend comfortably at the edge of vehicle seat?
  • Does the lap belt stay on the top of the child’s thighs, not up on their belly?
  • Is the shoulder belt center on the child’s chest and shoulder?
  • Can the child stay seated this way for the whole trip? (e.g they won’t put the shoulder part of their seat belt under their arm or behind their back?)

Front Seat. By Washington law, all children should ride in the back seat of the car until age 13. (Exceptions for: pickup trucks or sports cars with no back seat)

More info: www.800bucklup.org; www.safercar.gov/parents; https://www.healthychildren.org/English/safety-prevention/on-the-go/Pages/Car-Safety-Seats-Information-for-Families.aspx

Educator Resource: I have two handouts on this topic – a 1 page summary (the info on this page, plus illustrations) and a 2 page version with more details.

Process over Product

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You may hear early childhood educators say “Focus on Process more than Product.” Let’s explore what they mean by process and product, and some concrete tips on how to stay focused on the process.

In product-focused activities, the teacher or adult has a finished product in mind and has created a sample for children to copy, children have instructions to follow and all the children’s finished products look similar to each other. The closer the result to the displayed sample, the more we tend to praise the child for doing it well. There is definitely a place for product-focused activities, and learning how to follow directions to create something specific. This can be an excellent way to learn certain skills. But, if our child only follows directions, it can limit their creativity and limit their learning. It can also create stress if they feel like they always have to work to do things ‘the right way.’ (Check out the pictures at the top of the page. They all show paintings made using a flower as a paint brush. The lovely picture on the left is from here. The others are from 3 year olds in my class. All we did was set out paper, paint, and flowers, and the kids in our class had a fabulous time exploring this art experience. But imagine if we had set the painting of the flowers in a vase on the table at the start of class. How would that have affected the kid’s process and product?)

So, we want a balance of product and process in our child’s lives. For example, if your child gets a Lego set and follows the directions precisely to create the model as designed, they learn about paying close attention to directions, doing things in the right order, and not leaving out any steps. They are satisfied with their result. But then, you can encourage them to take that Lego set apart when they’re ready, and mix it with their other Legos, and play as long as they want, and build anything they want to build. That’s the process-focused side of Legos.

In process-focused activities, the focus is on experience, and exploration of tools and techniques. It is completely child-guided, with no right or wrong way of exploring. Children decide whether or not to do the activity, and how much time to spend on it. Examples in our classroom include: the water table, sensory table, block building, easel painting, “creation station” collages, and collaborative group art projects. We also do lots of explorations of scientific ideas and engineering projects which we think of as “tinkering.” These process-based activities do not lead to beautiful masterpieces to hang on the refrigerator or mail to grandparents. But they do lead to lots of fun and lots of learning.

Ways that you can support the Process:

  • When planning an activity, instead of asking “what will the children make”, ask “what will the children do?” and “what materials can I put out that invite creativity and learning?” If your child asks “what am I supposed to do?” you can say “I see lots of cool supplies and tools on this table. Want to try them out? What would you like to do with them?”
  • Approach the project like open-ended play. Let it be a joyful experience.
  • Provide plenty of uninterrupted time for kids to explore. Let them decide how long to spend on an activity. Some days you’ll put out an “invitation to play” and it will captivate them for hours. Other days, they’ll have other ideas of their own to pursue and barely skim past something that you planned.
  • Let go of your own judgments. Process-focused art and building projects can seem messy and pointless. Don’t think of them as a waste of materials, think of the brain cells your child is building through this experience and the skills they’ll learn now and apply to later efforts!
  • If you’re sitting with a child who is doing art or building something, try to copy what they are doing. Otherwise, they will try to copy you, and think that the way you’re doing it is the “right” way. They may be disappointed when their item is not as good as yours.
  • Or, if you’re playing side by side with them, make some mistakes: paint with your non-dominant hand, or build a tower too tall so it falls over. Let them see you explore.
  • Don’t ask them “what is it” – ask “tell me about what you’ve done.”
  • Don’t distract them with irrelevant questions. If they’re completely engaged in a process, don’t interrupt it with a name-this-color quiz.
  • Don’t decide for them that they are done. Often adults watch for when there’s a “nice” painting, and then offer to take the paper away before the child “messes it up.” Or they watch a child building and realize that it’s all about to come tumbling down, so they encourage the child to stop and not add that toppling brick on the top.
  • Ask them if they want to write their name on their art. If they say yes, then ask “would you like me to write it or do you want to?” If they want you to write it, ask where to write it. Ask them where they want to put it. On the refrigerator or in the recycling bin? Try to not be disappointed in their choices of what to keep and what to let go of.

As your child gets older, more and more of their time will be dedicated to products – book reports, math tests, science fair presentations, scoring goals at soccer, and more. Lots of time “doing things the right way.”

The early years should focus much more on process. All of a baby’s play time is process and free exploration. A toddler’s life should be about 90% process, 10% focused on specific accomplishments – learning to undress themselves, learning to eat with a fork, holding a pencil and making a scribble, stacking a few blocks to make a tower. In the preschool years, we may aim for 80% process, 20% product. Never think of the process as a less valuable learning experience. It’s building creativity, inspiring curiosity, helping them make unexpected connections, and getting them excited about what they can do ‘all by themselves.’

Thanks to these articles for inspiration:

http://www.ooeygooey.com/handouts/art.pdf

http://www.naeyc.org/tyc/article/process-art-experiences

http://prekandksharing.blogspot.com/2012/02/making-transition-from-product-to.html

http://www.prekandksharing.blogspot.com/2012/02/childrens-art-process-versus-product.html

Brain Map

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BrainMap

I have created a poster / handout on brain development and how parents can help their children learn. Great for educators to handout or post, but also helpful for parents to print a copy to post on the fridge as a reminder of ways to help all of your child’s brain capacity develop. The ages shown are “sensitive periods” when that part of the brain is most actively developing or reaching maturity, and when parents might most want to focus on those skills.

On the back is the handout for my “Hands On is Brains On” presentation.

If you don’t have access to a printer that can do 11×17 (most printers can’t), the “brain map” will reduce well to print on an 8.5×11 sheet.