A couple of weeks ago we decided now would be a good time for our 2.5 year old to become independent of diapers during the daytime.  This marks a bit of a departure for us from our traditional approach, which is to wait for warm weather and signs of interest on the child’s part.  All of our girls were trained by this age, but most of our boys we waited until around three.

But since he’ll be three in April, and it will still be cold, and since we learned with child no. 6 that waiting longer can often result in a significantly more difficult toilet training process (I never realized until then that there’s a window of opportunity that when missed, is missed) so we don’t want to wait until past three to begin, we decided to go ahead at this point and encourage him start the process.  I wasn’t excited about it, to say the least, because of the time and effort I thought it was going to require on my part.  But my husband very clearly remembers what happened last time, even though it’s been three years, and really didn’t want to go through that again, so he scheduled all of the older kids and himself one weekend to be responsible for taking him to the bathroom every two hours.  Three days of that was enough to get E. to get used to going to the bathroom, and after that we didn’t need to schedule anyone.  At that point, whenever I noticed it had been a while, I’d either take him myself, or ask whatever child was available to take him.  He preferred when his siblings took him, since they would sit on the step right outside the bathroom and read him books.  🙂

I didn’t post anything about this until now, because though he was staying dry most of the time and didn’t have many accidents, I don’t consider a child toilet trained until they take themselves to the bathroom when they need to go, and recognize what they’re doing before they do it.  And though he was going when we took him, he didn’t take himself and would tell us he needed to go as he was wetting himself.  But this week I saw him asking people to help him when he needed to go, or just going himself, so it looks like I can say in all honesty that he’s now toilet trained! 

So to sum up what we did: recognized he  had cognitive ability for it now, then took him on a regular basis (and it only takes once or twice for them to go in the toilet to understand what to do) for a couple of weeks, and now he goes himself.  He still wears diapers for naps and at night, though he often stays dry during his naps.  We still have the baby in diapers now, but no one misses changing a toddler’s dirty diapers.  🙂

I’ve never found this process to be a big deal (except for last time), and I think it’s in large part because don’t make a big deal about all of this, or put any pressure on a child for the process to happen at a certain speed.  I trust that they’ll enjoy feeling clean and dry, and will accomplish that when they’re ready.  I think most problems with toileting arise from starting a child before he is ready, and/or the parent having too much of an emotional involvement or vested interest in the process.  When I referred to waiting too long sometimes being a problem, I think it’s because once a child recognizes their body signals, knows what they are doing, and has learned to ignore those signals, it’s much harder to resensitize them to this. 

Avivah