Bree’s Potty Progress

Bree is making good progress in learning to use the toilet (or in this case, her potty) independently. There were plenty of successes in the last few weeks. As reported earlier, Bree is very good at telling when she is ready to do a poo and has been able to do this in the potty successfully right from the start. Urinating in the potty proved to be a little trickier but she is beginning to get the hang of it. There were times when she was unable to hold on and ended up wetting her pants at the entrance to the toilet door. On half of these occasions, Bree would cry even if I didn’t react. After cleaning her up, she will sometime sit on the potty again (without being prompted) and is occasionally surprised to produce another wee. Her parents and I are always amused by the delighted look on her little face.

Bree’s mum raised the question of a sceptical reward style plan to speed things up. She told me that a friend of hers suggested that we use a sticker chart to mark Bree’s successes in a day, and then reward her for collecting a decided number of stickers. This friend is using this chart at home for her little boy, who is around a year older than Bree. He only started toilet training at around the same time that Bree started hers. Bree’s mum was sceptical that it would work. We can see why they want to speed things up though. He had recently been accepted to an ELC for a 3 year old Kindergarten programme, in the next school year. His parents were told that he had to be toilet trained to attend.

I know for a fact that such a novelty way will definitely not have continuous positive results, especially if the sticker system is later introduced to ‘control’ the other parts of a child’s life. Children should not be rewarded for performing what is considered to be a normal bodily function. This is like rewarding a child for eating her meals each day. I have never been a fan of this sort of reward style plans (as seen on TV) for children. When things like toileting skills are introduced at the right time, children often participate without the need to be tricked into a reward scheme. For every little success, Bree is visibly happy to be able to complete the whole process. She is satisfied because she did it and looks forward to the next time. She is not doing it to get a sticker. Collecting stickers to get a toy doesn’t make sense to a child Bree’s age.

As soon as a child is curious and neurologically mature enough to start independent toileting, we as adults should support him/her gently. There shouldn’t be any time constraints to put pressure on the child so that he/she will be ‘trained’ sooner. Allow the child plenty of chances to learn to manage his/her own life gradually. Avoid introducing novelty methods to add more CONTROL.