Potty Training Step-By-Step Program

Potty Training is a very important development in our child's life. It helps him become independent and have stronger self-confidence. Whether you have decided to choose the early training, late training or potty train at 2 years old you will need to follow some steps in order to proceed and progress. I will suggest steps to follow based on my readings and my personal experience as a mother. Noting that potty training Nour lasted 2 months, it was relatively fast, easy and I am so proud of our experience that I would love to share it with you. At 28 months she was clean day and night and since then we never experienced any sudden accidents. So allow me to offer you this small guide maybe it'll help you.

• Buy a potty or a child's seat. In my case, we bought a beautiful colored child's seat that Nour chose herself. It is red, yellow and navy blue, she decorated it with Winnie the pooh stickers and it had built-in stairs to help her climb.
• Decide on the terminology you will use to refer to the bladder and bowel function (wee/poo - pipi/caca ) and tell your child what the potty is for. Explain to him how big kids don't do it in their nappies - use yourself and his dad as an example since you are his role models.
• Suggest that she sits on it to see what it's like, you can do it as a daily routine in the morning and at bedtime too.

You can start with those  first steps few months before starting the real training. Doing this you will be preparing your child to the idea of using the seat and if you do it right he will be so excited to start using the potty and the progress will be fast. Exactly what happened with my daughter. We started these steps when she was 20 months old and by the time she was 24 months old she was so excited to remove those diapers that it took us 2 months only to be completely clean, accidents-free!

• Try to figure out what time your child usually urinates and catch the motion by putting your child on the pot/seat and if you do catch urine or stool show pleasure and approval but don't go overboard.
• Depending on the willingness of your child, increase the frequency of pot sessions. Look at books with her while she sits on it, play games, teach her stuff ( we learned "what is this animal favorite food? "while potty training). The point about this increased length of time is that you increase the chances of something ending up in the potty. Never force her to sit on it for longer that she wants!
• Teach your child to tell you when has passed urine or a bowel motion. Every time you change her diaper tell her: "Is pee pee annoying you honey? Maybe next time you could tell mommy so she will change your diaper fast" Same thing goes for the bowel motion. Little by little your child will learn to pass the message to you and that means she is being aware of having urinated which is more important than the awareness of impending urination or bowel motion.
• When you feel that you're baby is happy and making some progress you can give a little more to drink before offering her to sit on the potty that way you will be increasing the chance of her urinating while sitting and that will make her so proud. They love to hear the sound of pee in the water cabinet my daughter clapped every time she went and I never forgot to cheer for her and reward her with a sticker. Always leave the big prize till the end or else you will be spending a fortune on potty training.
• Buy her nice colored under wears, this will encourage her to remove the nappies faster.
• At some point during the progress of the training, you should consider removing the diapers for at least 5 hours a day to make sure that she will pass urine during that time. It is a bit messy but it's worth it it will push the training forward. I owe this precious advice to a friend, and she is right. With those advance nappies a child is never annoyed from a little urine, he won't be encouraged to pee in the seat unless he feels the water going down his legs and seeing the mess it makes. 
• When going out while still in training, put nappies on unless you think it's a safe bet she can hand on long enough not to wet herself.
• Encourage greater independence in using the potty. Make sure the potty or the seat are easy to reach, teach your child how to pull down and up his pants and how to sit securely.
• Try to stay as calm and happy as you can. I consider potty training to be one of the most difficult stages but hey! It'll pass faster and smoother if you take it easy - don't loose it when your kid makes a mess. Always learn to praise his efforts and never make a big deal of accidents your will discourage your child and pull the training backwards.

I hope that those steps will help you throughout your training. How to Be Super Mom is always around for help leave your comments or visit my page, Like, and leave your question.

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Late Potty Training Pros and Cons

When are most children potty trained

Late Potty Training Pros and Cons

Potty training is one of the important milestones in a toddler's life and in ours as well. It takes a fair amount of time for a child to be well trained and requires a lot of patience and creativity from our side to help him be motivated to use the seat and stop wetting himself. The ideal age of starting the training is 2 years old, by then the child's bladder and bowel movement are well developed, his motor skills are improved and his cognitive skills are well established (When are most children potty trained?). But some parents choose to start early training (The early potty training pros and cons) and others decide to go by the late training which is usually discouraged and linked to many health side effects.
In order to give you a reliable article, I went through a number of books, studies, and interviews made with doctors in this field.
All of you must be wondering when is it considered a late potty training?
A late potty training is from 3 years old and up, since most pediatricians and specialists consider that the perfect age is at 2 years old. But as in every subject we find  people that encourage late training and others who assure that it has considerable side effects on a child's mental and physical health.
Dr. Baruch Kushnir, creator of the children DVD "The Magic Bowl: Potty Training Made Easy"  considers that potty training symbolizes progress in the acquisition of independence and control. He warns in an interview on www.sheknows.com that: "When a child is not completely potty trained by the age of four, he becomes an 'exception' and may suffer personal and social embarrassment and disappointments. He may also be exposed to unpleasant reactions from the social environment … and they may damage the child's self-image and self-confidence and interfere with his developing personality.


I- Pros:

• Fully developed bladder and bowel movement.
• The child will have achieved his verbal and communication skills.
• A child after 3 can understand better the concept of rewards.
• He can master his motor skills - therefor pulling up/down his pants and climbing to the seat sounds very easy to him.
• He's emotionally ready.

II- Cons:

• Our child will be ashamed of being one of few untrained kids which will effect his mental health.
• Physical consequences: When young children become dependent on diapers or pull-ups, they don't learn how to recognize the need to go to the bathroom. Their inability to control their bladder and bowels at an early age can actually affect their bladder and bowel control as they grow older.
• Late training could lead to bladder control problems and urinary tract infection.

Most of the pediatricians and child care specialists have agreed that the best age to start toilet training is between 1 1/2 and 3. As for the methods to follow, there isn't one golden rule, methods change depending on the child we are dealing with and the degree of development he has reached in all the important skills he will be needing for his training progress.

Reference:

Weltford, Heather. Successful Potty Training
Dr.-Kushnir.com
www.sheknows.com 

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Potty Training step by step program

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Early Potty Training Pros and Cons

Many parent worry that early training could harm the baby emotionally and mentally; this idea has been promoted by pediatricians and child care professionals and it goes back to the bad training methods. Parents in 1920's used harmful and abusive techniques that leaded to emotional side effects upon children.  Pediatricians, like Benjamin Spock and T. Berry Brazelton, argued that pushing children may cause a variety of troubles, including stool withholding, stool toileting refusal, regression, and bed wetting. On the other hand, the few scientific studies on potty training revealed that early training does not cause any problems.
In this article, we will review together the pros and cons of early potty training.

I- Cons:

1. Children trained earlier tend to take longer to complete training: the youngest the child is the less prepared he is for potty training which will slow the progress.
2. Infant training steals the child of the sense of pride older children develop when they accomplish the skill on their own, says T. Berry Brazelton, MD, a renowned pediatrician and the author of Toilet Training: The Brazelton Way (Da Capo Press). "When you start that early, you train a reflex, something that isn't conscious in a child," Dr. Brazelton says. "When it works, I'm sure it's rewarding. But when it doesn't, it could increase the parents' tension to the point where they say: 'Oh, my God, I put so much into this, why are they not getting it?' It's a parent-oriented kind of approach, and not a child-oriented approach."
3. Pushing the child to potty train too early will cause a variety of troubles, including stool withholding, stool toileting refusal, regression, and bed wetting.
4. Early training is unpractical for parents since they have to analyze their child's every facial expression,it is better to wait until age 2. That's typically when a child expresses interest in potty training and shows signs of readiness ( When are most children potty trained)

II- Pros:

1. Fewer diaper rashes
2. Fewer illness: The Rotavirus is less likely to spread among children in daycares if they had fewer diapers to change since this illness is spread by fecal to oral contamination and is extremely contagious. Few studies showed that children wearing diapers and in daycare are at higher risk of getting infectious diarrhea and infectious hepatitis.
3.  Less risk of bladder problems: Studies showed that late potty training increased risks of bladder control problem and urinary tract infection.
4. Positive effect on both the environment and economic situation: Early training has financial benefits related to the substantial costs of diapers and environmental benefits when we cut the use of diapers.
5. Natural bonding experience: Just like breastfeeding, potty training is a natural bonding experience between baby and his mother. Social connections develop as they both communicate, touch and spend quality time together.

In general, it is advised to wait till your child is 24 months, then he will be ready and the process will be easier to both of you. You will still benefit from all the advantages of early training even if trained after 2. My advice to you, is to start preparing your baby to the idea since he is 18 months. Always refer to the fact that you and his dad use the bathroom instead of diapers, take him to choose the potty or baby seat (as I did), let him decorate it with stickers of his choice. Start practicing sitting on potty once a day without expecting any progress since you are just preparing your kid to the process; this way when he is ready the concept of urinating in the seat will be already planted in his mind and this will lead to faster progress in the training.

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When Is The Best Time To Start Potty Training?

Potty training is one of the important milestones in a toddler's life and in ours as well. It takes a fair amount of time for baby to be well trained and requires a lot of patience and creativity from our side to help our child be motivated to use the seat and stop wetting himself. But before starting, we should understand more about the bladder and the bowel movement development.

The bladder

The adult bladder can hold about 280 ml of urine before the urge to urinate is felt. Urine is made in the kidneys. The kidneys work all the time to regulate the water and salt content of the body, and they maintain the right balance in order to prevent illness.
In a small baby, the physiology of urination is similar; though the kidneys are comparatively immature in their functioning, and aren't designed to cope with a high salt intake or to withstand dehydration. Urine is stored in the bladder in much the same way as in the aduly, thoufh the capasicy of the bladder starts off very small, and grows throughout infance and childhood.
In a baby, the emptying of the bladder is a totally involuntary action, and the sphincter opens in response to the fullness of the bladder; though the reflex can be conditioned to respond to other stimulation like the rim of the potty being placed on the baby's bottom. the frequency of peeing seems to decrease as the months go on, and parents will notice that as their baby grows her diaper is less to be wet. At some point, the child becomes aware that he has passed urine. The next phase is when the child he knows he needs to go in the next second or so. Little by little the child will learn to hold for longer by deliberately controlling the sphincter muscle by not releasing it. this ability increases with physical and social maturity, and with the growing capacity of the bladder.

The Bowel

The function of the bowel in human beings is to complete the digestion and absorption of food begun earlier in the digestive tract, and to send waste material to the rectum where it is stored and later excreted as faeces.
the baby's first bowel motion is called meconium, over the next few days, in average 3 days, the stool changes they will be very loose and daffodil-yellow if breastfed or pale brown and firmer if formula fed.
Again on the pattern of bladder control, the knowledge that she's about to pass a motion is the next stage reached by the child and from there she gets to a phase were passing isn't too urgent.

When is the best time to begin potty training? 18 months? 24 months? or even later?
How to be super mom made all the research needed to give you a helpful answer.

Many parent worry that early training could harm the baby emotionally and mentally; this idea has been promoted by pediatricians and child care professionals and it goes back to the bad training methods. Parents in 1920's used harmful and abusive techniques that leaded to emotional side effects upon children.  Pediatricians, like Benjamin Spock and T. Berry Brazelton, argued that pushing children may cause a variety of troubles, including stool withholding, stool toileting refusal, regression, and bed wetting. On the other hand, the few scientific studies on potty training revealed that early training does not cause any problems.


To be ready for potty training a child should develop certain skills.

1- As we have mentioned before the first thing to be achieved is the bladder and bowel development
2- The second sign of readiness is motor skills. On the average, children will walk around the age of 12 months. Once your child has mastered walking and running, then s/he may be interested in acquiring other "grown up" skills and will start developing other gross and fine motor skills required for potty training. The main motor skill is having enough finger & hand coordination skills to dress and undress and more specifically to pull his/her underpants down and up.

3- Cognitive and verbal skills: the potty training process reuqires a complexe combination of verbal and physical actions. A chid should be able to pull down/up his underwear, stay long enough to finish emptying and all this requires certain amount of concentration for him to understand your explanations and responses and to be able to put them together to understand the whole training process.

4- Emotional growth and social awarness: This is probably the hardest readiness to achieve, especially since children go through phases. The components that will help in determining your child's emotional and social readiness are self mastery manifested by "I can do it" or "I am a big boy/girl now", desire for approval, and social awareness.

In average, kids will have achieved those development around 24 months then, I believe is the best time to start taking potty training seriously.
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Reference:
D.G. Vulliamy (1982 edition), The New Born Child (Churchill livingstone)
G.H. Lowrey (1973 edition) Growth and Development of Children (Yearbook Medical Publishers)
http://www.pottytrainingconcepts.com

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Early potty Training Pros and Cons

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