Is potty training causing you stress or anxiety? I’m unpacking everything you need to know to help your child learn to use the potty with more confidence and ease.
In this episode, we explore:
- Readiness Signs: What to look for physically, behaviorally, and emotionally to know if your child is ready to start potty training.
- Setting the Stage: What to do before you start potty training to create a supportive environment that encourages independence and reduces pressure around the potty.
- How to Potty Train: Practical tips and personal stories of how to actually start potty learning once you’ve determined your child is ready.
- Navigating Accidents and Setbacks: How to stay calm and empathetic during the inevitable ups and downs, and when taking a break might be the best next step.
- Avoiding Common Pitfalls: Why reward systems might not be the best approach, and what to do to foster intrinsic motivation instead.
Whether you’re just starting or already in the thick of it, this episode offers you a compassionate and realistic approach to getting your child to start using the bathroom.
Sarah (00:00):
If you can remember that one of our most important skills that we are wanting to help them develop is that interoceptive awareness. Then getting their mindful awareness onto something outside of their body is going to be kind of counterproductive for us. We want to create kind of a calm, distraction-free environment in the bathroom and let them focus on what they’re doing.
(00:23):
Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights so you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. This is Securely Attached.
(01:03):
Hey everyone. So we have not done a solo deep dive episode in a really long time and I’ve been really wanting to do an episode about potty training and I keep putting it off because the reality is I am ambivalent about giving people a prescription for potty training, and I’m going to get into all of the reasons why in this episode, but I also get so many questions from parents about potty training and I do think that there are some core foundational things to consider when you are getting ready to, or even if you are right in the thick of potty training with your kid. Some people call it potty learning. I kind of like that better than potty training because I think it’s more kind of paints it in this light of like it is an evolution, it’s an evolving process, it’s a learning experience.
(01:59):
It puts the sort of locus of control on the child’s, not the parent. If I am training my child, I’m the actor in that situation. If my child is learning how to use the potty, they’re the actor in that situation. So I kind of actually prefer potty learning. I’m going to call it potty training because that’s just what most people call it and it’s just easier. It just rolls off the tongue. It’s just more automatic. But I do think that’s a helpful reframe if we think about this as this is a learning experience, just like any other learning experience for our child, it takes time, it takes practice. It has to exist in a space where learning can take place, which means they need to be regulated, their learning brain has to be on. They can’t be in a heightened state of stress. Pressure is unhelpful, urgency is unhelpful.
(02:50):
I also know as a parent, sometimes we have stress, urgency and feel pressure, so that’s normal and it’s totally going to happen. A big part of what we’re going to talk about today is how we as a parent can manage our own feelings of stress, urgency, irritation, pressure, doubt, worry, all the things, but have it be something that we process internally regulate it and allow it to be separate from our child’s experience around learning to use the bathroom. So I should also say if you’ve been listening, I have two kids, my son is six, my daughter’s five. Both of them are potty trained, have been for a long time, both of them, and this is really important. I really think, and this is my ambivalence about doing a potty training episodes. Everyone’s potty training journey is going to be really different and there isn’t a right or wrong way to do it.
(03:49):
Both of my two kids had very different potty training experiences. What was more or less consistent was how I approached it with each of them, my attitude, the environment that I set up, but honestly, they were, I think my son learned to use the potty during lockdown in covid. So that was a kind of unique experience where we had so much control over his environment that it made it so easy that it almost didn’t even register to me as a thing, which I got lucky on that one. My daughter was older and she was out or she wasn’t older. She was about the same age-ish as when my son did maybe a little later actually. But we were back to sort of semi-normal life by the time that was happening and we were out and about using public bathrooms and doing all those things, and she was at daycare for a lot big chunks of the day and I had less control over her and her. She didn’t live in a Petri dish during this period of time. My son kind of did, and that’s probably more realistic to the way that anyone today is probably practicing helping their kid learn to use the potty. So I say this because even within a family, different kids are going to have different experiences learning to use the potty, different challenges, different strengths, different developmental readiness. We’re going to talk a lot about the difference between chronological age and developmental readiness.
(05:31):
We’ll get there, but the first thing I want to talk about is just sort of how to introduce the idea to your kid because again, it’s a learning process. It’s going to start with a very broad strokes, like dip your toe in the water, start to infuse the ideas of making a transition towards using the potty. We are going to do that gradually over time and we’re going to kind of do it in an immersive sort of just having it weave into daily life and elements of our kids’ life. You’ll be if you’re in it, but if you haven’t, you’re thinking about it, you’ll start to realize there’s so many little tiny moments that we can connect to starting this building block this construction of the story of potty learning or potty training or using the bathroom because we use it all the time, whether we’re actually going to the bathroom or we’re experiencing bodily sensations related to needing to use the bathroom or it’s just such a constant in our life. It’s so constant that we just kind of don’t notice it. But when you’re teaching your kid how to use the bathroom, you start to notice it everywhere. So as you’re noticing it, just start naming it, talking about it. Oh, I have to go to the bathroom.
(06:59):
That feeling came on fast. I’m going to go sit in the bathroom now I’m going to sit on the potty. I’m going to sit on the toilet. Use whatever language you normally use, actual anatomically accurate names for your body parts and talk about penises and vaginas and butts or anuses, whatever language is comfortable but also accurate. It’s a great time, and this is a total tangent, but we’ve probably heard me say this before, but when you’re learning to use the potty body part, language comes up a lot and I think it’s helpful to talk about our kids’ body parts with accurate language. What has nothing to do with potty training, and this is my tangent, is that getting in the habit of using anatomically accurate language for our children’s body parts is actually a huge protective factor against child abuse because when a child uses accurate labels for their body parts, predators tend to stay away.
(08:08):
It’s kind of a dog whistle that this kid is aware talks that people are paying attention, they’re teaching their child how to advocate for themselves and how to report things. So total side note, but I always like to mention that because it’s going to come up a lot here. A lot of times parents have a little ambivalence or feel a little uncomfortable or awkward using penis, vagina, anus, that language with their kids when they’re going to the bathroom, and it’s totally normal to have that ambivalence and I also think it’s a great opportunity to just desensitize ourselves to it because we’re going to be talking about it a lot. It’s going to be coming up a lot, and when you use a word a lot takes the sting out of it, so you’ll get used to it really fast and it’s good for your children to hear those words lots. So folding it in to all kinds of moments throughout your day, your kids’ day, pulling the curtain, pulling back the curtain on what this looks like. If you’re comfortable, this could mean allowing them to come into the bathroom and observe you use the toilet and talking about what you’re doing, describing your physical sensations that you’re noticing as you use the toilet and allowing ’em to ask you questions about the process and answering them with kind of a pretty nonchalant air to your tone, inviting it and being kind of really fluid in inviting it all.
(09:42):
Another factor to consider that I think is often incredibly overlooked and is super, super critical in my opinion when it comes to sort of introducing the idea of potty training and helping our children develop a readiness for it is really talking about bodily sensations connected to the urgency to pee or poop or the actual feelings of peeing or pooping or the feelings of sort of relief or release afterwards. Helping our children gain language for an awareness of what’s called interoceptive sensations in interoception is our a sensory input. That’s what is happening inside my body sensations that are happening inside my body. So a headache would be an interceptive sensation, feeling hungry, noticing like a rumbling in my tummy is an interceptive sensation. Needing to pee or poop and feeling that sensation in my body is an interoceptive sensation and it is a critical, critical one to predict success and readiness for being able to use the potty.
(10:59):
It’s very, very, very difficult for a child to learn to use the bathroom if they are not aware of the need to go. That’s why oftentimes that’s usually a major source of accidents is they aren’t linking up that connection of like, oh, when I have that feeling, that’s my cue to stop what I’m doing, go to the bathroom, hold down my pants, sit on the toilet and then relax and release. It’s actually quite a number of steps. So it sounds so again, we are so used to it that we start to forget how many steps go into it because it’s so automatic for us now, but it is quite a number of actual steps to be successful at using the bathroom. One of the first ones being noticing the urge. So I always really encourage as you are starting to introduce this process, and if you’re already started, it’s never too late, but really focusing on interceptive awareness and it doesn’t just have to be about the bathroom sensations, right?
(12:13):
Building interceptive awareness all over the place is going to help that that’s going to build that muscle, that awareness muscle of those bodily cues and that’s going to increase their ability to really be successful when they are going to do the bathroom learning. So one other thing that I think is helpful to kind of introduce is incorporating it into play and reading and all kinds of little tiny sort of more unrelated or sort of indirect places. So it’d be a great time to get some little playmobile toys or a little toy bathroom for a stuffed animal. And I love the book Potty! by Terrific Toddlers. I love it because it talks about not just how the process of potty learning evolves, but it talks about the ambivalence and some of the fears that some kids have. It shows multiple different kids at different stages of readiness.
(13:29):
So that’s one of my go-to books for introducing this stuff to our kids. My daughter loved that book. She wanted me to read it on complete repeat, which was another sign of noticing readiness, which we’ll talk about in a minute. But before we even get to readiness, let’s talk about setting the environment up for success. So one of the things that we really want to make sure is that it is a accessible, comfortable, child friendly environment, so making sure that there’s a little potty that they can easily access or if you’re using a smaller toilet seat kind of lid thing that there’s a stool so they can easily get up to it. It’s a great time to be making clothing more accessible to remove. So do away with the onesies and the multiple stepped clothes that need to be removed by a grownup like elastic waistbands are your friend.
(14:40):
Make it so that they can easily get out of their clothes to get onto the toilet, the cutesy suspenders and frilly one pieces, just not our friends when we’re learning to use the bathroom. And also things that just in general make the bathroom accessible, so having a stool that leads to the sink so they can easily wash their hands. Having one of those little faucet spout attachments so that the water comes closer to them when they’re washing their hands can be helpful. Anything that makes it less friction in the bathroom in general is good. And another thing is get a bunch of potties, put them everywhere. Don’t be afraid the bathroom when you get to the point where you’re really actually doing it, I wouldn’t do this at first, this is sort of like when you’re introducing it, plan to have a potty in the bathroom way before you plan to have your child start really intentionally practicing potty training.
(15:41):
It’s great to just have around, it’s part of the furniture in the bathroom, it’s a fixture and eventually they’ll be ready for it. So that also helps because it creates familiarity and comfort and so let them sit on the potty with their clothes on, let them play with it for a while before we’re going to use it. Once you start using it, it’s no longer a toy, but let them kind of explore it. Let them sit on it fully clothed. This is all preparatory. This is all before you’ve started the process and then you’re going to start the process. And how do you know when it’s time to start the process? This is where I think most of the people who I speak with, most of the parents have the most questions. How do I know it’s time? And I can give you age ranges.
(16:32):
The American Academy of Pediatrics kind of has some age-based guidelines, which I’ll talk about, but even the American Academy of Pediatrics and many other people, myself included, say we can give you ages and it is a range, which means it’s not going to necessarily be a specific guideline that you should follow for your child looking for developmental readiness. Science is far more useful, so I’m going to give you some age ranges because I do think it’s helpful to have kind of as a baseline, but no, you’re going to use this as an initial step in assessment and very much not the last one, not the only one. You are then going to look at your kid and you’re going to look at their developmental readiness, but typically around 18 to 24 months is when some read few children are starting to show readiness signs and they can start potty training successfully in this range.
(17:40):
However, it is way less common and it typically involves, think of a bell curve. The 18 to 24 months is the very tail end of maybe the left side of that bell curve. So it’s like not most kids are going to do this at this time, and it’s just that if you have a child, again looking for readiness, I mean I usually find myself talking about readiness cues as a way to help parents feel better about slowing down and not rushing a kid. But I also think it’s important to know if you have a really young kid, one and a half years old or two years old, who is showing you that they are ready because they’re showing you all the developmental readiness signs, you are welcome to give it a go. You don’t have to wait either. So this is what I mean by really following your child’s lead and looking for readiness cues more so than age, but I don’t necessarily recommend a whole lot of aggressive potty training at two years old, but if you have a kid who is showing you that they’re ready, there’s no problem with checking it out and trying it out.
(18:52):
Be prepared for regressions, be prepared for one step forward, two steps back, three steps forward, and a slow kind of back and forth, back and forth until we finally get there. That’s totally normal and fine. That’s true for older kids too, but I would say I really don’t think that before 18 months just physically because some physical readiness signs that are important as well, they have to be able to get their clothes off of them themselves. They have to be able to to get up to the toilet and support their selves on there and not fall in or if they’re using a little potty, that’s a little bit easier I think, but they still have to physically be able to do it. I’m not going to get into elimination communication in this episode because frankly I don’t know that much about it, and so I’m going to stay in my lane here if you’re interested in elimination communication, which is something that basically to my understanding is helping any babies as young as infancy kind of learn to pee in the toilet, go and Google that or find someone who’s really specialized in it.
(20:14):
I don’t know enough to speak to it, but we’re not going to talk about that today. I don’t have a problem with it, but I really can’t speak to its efficacy and I think it could be a lot of work for parents, although I think some people love it. So go forth and seek that info out if you’re interested. But more typically, I think two to two and a half is when most kids start to be thinking. Most families start to be thinking about potty training. If your kids at this age have the sort of physical cognitive and skills necessary for successful potty training, I think I sort of tend to sort of move towards three more.
(20:58):
I just think if are, they’re not totally there, it’s going to be an uphill battle. I’m looking for a window where there’s going to be all the boxes are checked and there’s going to be more ease. I don’t see a huge return on your investment to starting it a little bit too early and then having it drag on for a really long time. I think it’s almost like easier to wait till they’re really, really ready and having it take less time because they’re just really ready to just jump in and do it. Again though. Let’s talk about readiness science because that is far more important than age. So let’s first talk about physical science that they’re ready. They’re going to be having dry periods of multiple hours at a time or waking up from naps with a dry diaper, sometimes waking up in the morning with a dry diaper, though that’s less common early on in this thing, but even if your kid is consistently going hours with a dry diaper, that means that there’s bladder control capacity that is a good indicator that they’re physically muscular, their bodily functions.
(22:19):
They can control their bladder in a way that actually is going to be a skill they’re going to need to have to have success at potty training. Also, things like regular bowel movements because that is also going to be a big part of them being able to have a rhythm and a routine around using the bathroom if they’re really constipated. That is actually going to be a really big challenge for potty training. So that’s another thing is we’re going to talk about that a little bit in terms of considerations for when to take a pause. But predictable and healthy and normal bowel movements are also important for knowing, okay, we’re ready to do this. And then physical coordination, can they run and walk and sit down independently? Can they physically get their clothes off? How independent can they move their body to be the agent in this process?
(23:22):
Other signs of readiness are behavioral signs, and this is awareness of their bodily functions. They know when they’re going pee, they know when they’re pooping. Maybe they’re making certain facial expressions or they’re moving their body in a different way or they’re even better using their words and saying, I am peeing, I am pooping, or they’re going and hiding or doing a very specific behavior that shows you that they know that they’re doing this thing. This isn’t just like a, oh, I didn’t even know that happened. It’s like I am aware that something is happening here and I know what it is. That is a really good sign that they’re ready to start getting kind of orienting towards the bathroom and going to the bathroom in the toilet. Oftentimes they’ll show discomfort with their dirty diapers. They will ask to be changed or they will sort of complain about the dirty diaper. Again, this is that awareness that something has happened and I don’t actually like this on my body.
(24:26):
I’m ready for this to be gotten off of me interest in others’ bathrooms, habits. So if they want to know what you doing on the toilet, when they want to know when their siblings are going to the bathroom or friends are going to the bathroom, kids in group learning group childcare, often potty trained earlier because they’re watching their friends go into the bathroom and try it out, and so they’re just a little bit more exposed to the process. But also kids with older siblings and if they can be watching their parents and if the parents can invite them into this process for themselves, that’s really helpful. And when they show an interest in that, that’s a good sign that they’re kind of getting ready. Other signs of behavioral readiness is a desire for independence regardless of bathroom use, but just like, let me do it mine.
(25:23):
I want to do it. They want to dress themselves, they want to get their own stuff, they want to carry the stuff around the house, whatever. When they sort of have that kind of pull to be more independent and be in charge of themselves, that’s another sign they’re ready to be exploring this. They also need to be able to understand and follow instructions because remember when I was describing actually there’s a multi-step process for getting to the bathroom successfully, noticing the sensation, stopping what I’m doing, which is a tough one, inhibiting that impulse. A lot of kids have trouble not because they don’t know how to use the bathroom, but they don’t know how to stop having the thing that they don’t know how to stop enjoying the thing that they’re doing so that they can go and so have an accident because they waited too long, stopping and then going physically, moving their bodies to the bathroom, pulling off their clothes and climbing onto the toilet seat and relaxing their muscles so that they can release the pee or the poop.
(26:30):
Those are multi-step things. And if your child can understand and follow multi-step instructions, again outside of the potty training process, but can you turn this off? Can you go over there? Can you grab that thing? Can you bring it to me? That is a capacity that’s important for potty learning. And then lastly I would say is communication skills. Can they communicate their needs either verbally or through other modes of communication, but like gestures, but are they able to communicate to you that they need something successfully because that’s also really important. And then I also think it’s really helpful to think about emotional readiness. Are they willing? Are they open to trying things like using the toilet? Are they willing or open to trying other challenging things? Are they really resistant? This is kind of thinking about a little bit of temperament, but also just emotional development.
(27:41):
Are they very slow to open up to new things? If that’s the case, then you want to take your time with transitioning them into this. If they’re more gregarious and are like, I’m in to whatever it is, you might have more success and move through this more quickly. But there’s nothing right or wrong about either of those. Just knowing your kid’s emotional readiness and in general is going to help you gauge and have realistic expectations of how your child’s going to cope with the changes that are involved and the sort of reasonable and sort of organic stressors that come with learning how to use the potty. Okay, another thing that’s really important I think when we’re talking about starting this process is to set the tone ourselves. So the energy that we bring to this process is really important.
(28:36):
Even if our words aren’t saying this, but if our body language is communicating urgency or stress or frustration or ambivalence, then our child’s going to feel that too. If we can come into this process with a relaxed and trusting attitude with kind of low urgency and confidence that they will get the hang of this eventually this can really help a child approach. Potty training with confidence and managing our own emotions and expectations is also really, really important in the face of accidents. And believe it or not, successes like a successful potty in the toilet moment, keeping a low key attitude. Whether our kid is successful at peeing in the potty or when they’re having an accident helps both of these events feel like they’re equally part of the process. So we just kind of want to help normalize that. Learning to use the bathroom means we have some successful times and we have some accidents and they’re all part of the process.
(29:51):
And so we kind of want to approach both with the same energetic response. Now, I’m not saying that you can’t celebrate successes that you have to keep everything super flat and neutral. That’s not what I mean. Positive praise is very useful. Celebrating successes is very useful, but it’s kind of like the energy we bring to that celebration and that praise just try to keep it regulated. Oftentimes, I see I fight this urge myself. I remember one time when my kid successfully peed on the potty and I wanted to just clap and shout and be so excited, and I, on the inside kind of did a little dance, but I really held in probably 85% of that energy and communicated the positive response, positive reaction in a much more modulated way than what I felt on the inside. And again, this isn’t to be monotone and still fish and about our kids having a successful moment, definitely celebrate it.
(31:07):
But here’s the thing that’s a little tricky. When we get really excited, when we have a really high intensity reaction, even when it’s a positive one, we have to remember that’s still activating for our kids. And not only is it activating, but it can inadvertently lead to a sense of pressure for them to continue to hit that mark. And for some kids, the sort of flip side of it, like the absence of those exuberant reactions when they don’t make it to the potty, can lead to feelings of frustration or disappointment, which could really actually end up derailing them. So by all means, a smile, a high five, that must have felt good. These are great positive reinforcers that validate the effort, they validate the success, but they don’t add an outsized pressure or hyper attention to the potty training process. So as much as we want to be really, really excited about when they do it, modulate it, and then similarly, when we’re approaching accidents or setbacks from a place of, again, neutrality and really bringing in the empathy, the support, non catastrophizing, this is really important.
(32:31):
And I think it’s very important also to note that just like we can get really, really, really excited when our kids actually pee in the potty, it can be really easy to slip into a panicked or intense reaction to an accident. It can be startling or frustrating or irritating, but when we can notice those feelings, when we can give ourselves some grace for having them, when we can regulate our internal fight or flight response in that moment, slow down and just respond calmly and matter of factly, and again, remembering this is part of the learning process can really turn down the sort of high stakes feeling of an accident. Like, okay, accidents happen. Sometimes we pee, we can clean it up, and it really sets a very important tone.
(33:30):
One more thing that kind of falls I think in this category of how we respond in general, and I know this is a little controversial, and again, I really feel like I should say this. If I’m saying anything that you didn’t do and it’s making you feel like, oops, I made a mistake. Or if I’m saying something that you, I’m telling you not to do something that you did do and you’re thinking, oh, please, please, this is not high stakes. This is not a place of judgment. None of this is going to damage. If you shouted to the rooftops when you’re a kid, peed on the potty, totally not a big deal. Take what I’m saying with a grain of salt. Take what works for you, leave what doesn’t, do not feel like you need to feel badly if you deviating from what I’m describing here, this is just sort of a way to think about it if you haven’t started yet, or just if you’re still in it, like, okay, we can modify how we’re doing things and we don’t have to feel bad about how we’ve been doing things either.
(34:45):
We’re all doing the best we can with the information we got. So I think that’s an important point. But going back to what I was going to say, I recommend avoiding, and this is controversial because a lot of people really, a lot of people tell you to do this is using a reward system, using a sticker chart, giving them a treat, doing some sort of positive reinforcer, some sort of tangible positive reinforcer to use in the potty if you do this, that is really, really, really, really, really okay. Why I recommend avoiding it is because kind of what I was saying before, if we have a really excited response to our kid making it to the bathroom and then when they don’t, there is the absence of that response. For some kids that can be actually a negative reinforcer. It’s unintentionally, but they can make them feel, oh, this is really going to, the bathroom causes me.
(35:41):
I don’t think they’re going to have this conscious thought, but their body sort of is going to the bathroom. Too much pressure not knowing if I’m going to get the reward or get the punishment, which is obviously not our intention, but the absence of the reward can feel like a punishment to some kids can make this whole process so pressurized and so uncomfortable that they start to want to avoid it, and they start to want to just resist this process. And I know no parent wants to deal with that resistance or avoidance of the bathroom. So if the reward system for some kids will be totally reinforcing and will be perfectly fine, and if it is fine, keep doing it. It doesn’t matter if you’re noticing that your child is starting to avoid or resist this process a little bit. If you’re using rewards, I’d get rid of ’em.
(36:28):
I’d actually take a solid break from the process. I’d reset. I’d let it settle for a while, let the dust settle for a while, and then I’d reenter it kind of following more this process that I’m describing of a really low pressure, nonchalant attitude to it, really trying to keep it as normalized and boring kind of as possible because some kids don’t respond well to pressure even if we’re not thinking of it as pressure and we’re thinking of it as sort of positive stuff. It can feel like pressure for kids. So if you’re seeing resistance avoidance, that would be a place where I would sort of reevaluate.
(37:20):
And one more thing as we’re getting it going and starting the process is to create a routine. And here’s another. I’m so annoying. I’m always going to tell you to do something and not do it equally in the same way. But what I mean is get a routine going, be consistent, have it be very predictable and simple, but also here’s the contradiction. Be willing to be really flexible with your routine. We have to balance the flexibility and the consistency. I know it can feel like being consistent and being flexible are mutually exclusive, but I promise you it is very much possible to be flexibly consistent and to be consistently flexible. It’s about kind of naming things as they’re happening, letting following your child’s lead. But we do want to have anchors. We want to have a sort of regular routine around the bathroom again, and this is where that the distinction between pressure and exposure can come in helpful.
(38:28):
We might always have a routine where when we get ready for bed, we brush our teeth, we sit on the potty or before dinner or time we sit on the potty or after breakfast, we sit on the potty. It’s not a time when we go to the bathroom, we just sit on the potty. Maybe something will come out, maybe it won’t, but we’ll sit and we’ll see. So that consistency around, always checking in about body sensations, always trying out, let’s sit on the potty and see what happens, and if nothing comes out, we move on. But if you’re constantly having a routine where your child is sitting on the potty on a regular clip throughout the day, eventually they’re going to match that timing up and they will go to the bathroom while they’re sitting on the potty. And when that happens, that’s where you really want to help them sink up what they were feeling in their body because we’ve already planted those seeds of interceptive awareness. Oh, you relaxed your body and the pee came out and that felt kind of relaxing and good.
(39:45):
And then you can give them that smile or give them that high five or say, I bet that felt really good. And then you could say, let’s wash our hands and move on to the next thing. Let’s go do something fun. So we want to help our kids have that consistency because it’s anchoring, it reduces anxiety, it helps them build sort of a sense of efficacy and predictability and mastery over being in the bathroom and using this contraption of a toilet or a potty, but it’s not always going to be about actually peeing or pooping on that. But the routine should be around getting in there, being in there, sitting on the bathroom and seeing what happens. Great time to establish other types of good hygiene routines like this is when we wash our hands. We can sing a song even if we don’t pee or poop, we’ll still wash our hands, just creating this sort of rhythm in the bathroom.
(40:43):
It’s also in talking about routines and consistency, it’s helpful to have consistency in whatever process you are approaching this with among all the people who are helping your kid use the bathroom. So all the parents, all the grandparents, all the babysitters, nannies, teachers at daycare, whomever, just let them know what your process is and let them know what the rhythm is or the routine is that’s going to help that consistency. Everyone’s going to deviate a little bit. That’s not the most important thing, but just let them in on the core structure you’re going with so that your child gets used to it being the same with everybody. All right, now let’s talk about you’ve started. Let’s keep it going. Okay, this is the thing that I think is really important to remember. We have to manage our expectations and have realistic expectations of what this process looks like.
(41:42):
Otherwise, we can get really overwhelmed despite what some people have been able to achieve. Please, again, if you can get your kid to learn to use the potty in three days, mazel off, you’re great. But generally for most kids, that’s very unrealistic and that’s okay. This is very rarely is this going to be over and done within three days. Very rarely is this going to be over and done within a few weeks. For some kids it will. And again, there’s partly because if you wait till that window when all the prerequisites are in place and you really wait till they’re really ready, it can go so much faster if you’re feeling rushed. And sometimes we have a sense of urgency. Sometimes it’s like the environment. Maybe your kid is going to camp and they can’t go to camp if they’re in diapers. So sometimes it’s okay and that’s okay.
(42:36):
We can push it, right? We can stretch their capacity for readiness if we need to just know it could be a more emotionally for fraught experience and we can mitigate that too. Sure. I’ll have to do a follow-up episode on this, but we’re talking just generally. If you have the capacity to follow their lead, just know it doesn’t need to take three days. The longer you wait, usually the shorter it will take, but that’s not always true either. But it’s a process that takes time and it will have ups and downs. That’s kind of how learning works. We don’t usually just learn something the first time we try it. Usually we gain some and then we take some steps back to integrate it, and then we gain some more and then we take some steps back to integrate it and then we gain some more until we hit that kind of tipping point where it all comes together and we’re like, oh, I got this.
(43:25):
Okay, I’m done. So know that ahead of time because that’s going to help. And it’s also really important to be willing to adapt and modify as you go in the moment that you are trying to maintain this process. It’s important to remember that our kids are going to have feelings about it and holding space for all kinds of feelings is really important. There’s going to be potentially fear. There could be curiosity, there could be resistance, there could be a sense of pride. All’s fine. There’s no bad feelings when you are learning to use the bathroom. It can be very frustrating for kids when they have accidents. They can feel ashamed when they have accidents, even if we are not shaming them at all, they can have their own organic sense of shame and helping them process, make sense of it, diffuse it, help them to dismiss the feeling of shame to say that there’s nothing to be ashamed of. You didn’t do anything wrong. Accidents happen to everybody.
(44:31):
Normalizing this is really important. And also validating that it is hard. This is like anything learning to do is anything new is tough and we have lots of feelings about it. It’s also helpful to be a bit of a detective to understand why maybe if they’re feeling afraid or resistant, why that might be going on. Try to be a detective. What is it that they don’t maybe like about it? Is it that maybe the toilet flush is too loud and it’s overwhelming for them? Maybe the toilet seat’s too cold and they don’t like how it feels. Maybe they really, really, really struggle with stopping the fun thing that they’re doing and transitioning to go to the bathroom. Maybe they are feeling pressure. So looking at resistance from a detective lens is very helpful.
(45:19):
And also know that kids can have a lot of ambivalence about pooping way more than peeing. A lot of times kids will get pee down faster and either are later at learning how to poop on the potty reliably or actually are very anxious about pooping on the potty. So there’s something about having something physically poop leave their body. It’s different than pee. It’s a part of them that is leaving their body and going away down the toilet can actually be a little freaky for them. They’re used to it sort of hanging out in their diaper and it’s so heavy and substantial that the idea that it can just drop into the toilet, which can make a loud sound, it can splash water on them. All kinds of things can be tricky with poop. Helping them understand these processes, naming them all helpful. It’s also I think, incredibly helpful to provide some distraction free potty time.
(46:19):
I think sometimes we can get tempted to have them be playing with something or watching a screen to get them to be on the potty. But if you can remember that one of our most important skills that we are wearing to help them develop is that interoceptive awareness, then getting their mindful awareness onto something outside of their body is going to be kind of counterproductive for us. We want to create kind of a calm distraction-free environment in the bathroom and let them kind of focus on what they’re doing. And if they don’t want to sit on the potty for very long, then that’s fine. Let them get up and go do something else and come back and try again. But getting them to stay on the potty using some external distraction mechanism, it doesn’t really serve the function of what we’re actually trying to do.
(47:18):
So I think it’s better to get them to tolerate sitting on the potty for perhaps shorter periods of time, but being kind of aware of their body when they’re on the potty. And another really good thing to help kind of keep them able to tolerate being on the potty is our presence and not just our physical presence, but our kind of emotional presence. Helping our kid associate potty time is a time of relaxed connection. Time with us is really helpful actually. And so we want to be mindful of our own energy in the bathroom with our kid. Are we feeling a sense of urgency or irritation? Is our mind elsewhere? Are we bored? Are we ruminating about something that happened at work or what we have to do next? Totally normal for us to have those experiences, but if you can notice them without judgment, just bring our attention back to our kid. Sort of think of it as like, I’m going to meditate on my kid for a couple minutes.
(48:16):
It doesn’t mean that we have to entertain our child while they’re on the potty necessarily, although by all means, feel free to That’s a different type of distraction. I don’t think that’s quite, nearly as distracting from their interceptive awareness as a screen or a toy, but being playful with them is totally fine, but also you don’t have to entertain them. You can literally just sitting there and you could chat with them or just sitting there quietly and just being there with them, but with them, them that’s really, really important and comforting and can create a positive vibe in the bathroom. That can also help really reduce avoidance and resistance around using the bathroom. Okay, I do want to talk a little bit about things going on. This whole realistic expectations thread is that sometimes we’re going to follow our child’s lead to a dead end, or I guess not a dead end. They will get this, but a derailment and that is normal and and sometimes we’re going to actually either delay potty training or pause potty training and try again later. And that’s really okay. Things to look out for. That might be a sign that like, Nope, not yet or too soon or going to take a break is like if there’s a real lack of readiness, maybe you thought they were ready and they’re just not.
(49:55):
Maybe they’re really resistant or anxious about the potty. If they’re really afraid of going to the bathroom, I think it can be helpful to take a break, try again later, and in the interim, do some desensitization kind of things where there’s zero pressure to use the bathroom, but maybe you’re going to do more like we’re going to practice flushing the toilet or other things. We got to figure, again, going back to that detective mentality, got to figure out what they’re afraid of. But sometimes just taking a break and really giving it some breathing room and then coming back to it later can be helpful. Also, things like if your child has any developmental delays for whatever reason, they might need more time to develop the skills necessary for potty training. And that is okay. I think it is more useful to work on gaining those developmental milestones and acquisition of those particular skills necessary for potty training.
(50:53):
Even if it’s way past three years old. That’s fine, rather than trying to really push a child to use the potty when they don’t have the basic core skills yet. So that’s okay. Or if there are health issues, if your kid has any ongoing health issues, especially if they have health issues that can relate to constipation or diarrhea, that really is going to be a challenge for potty training. So address those first and then go for it. Another thing that comes up all the time are family and environmental factors. If you have major life changes happening, so like a new sibling coming or you’re moving or you’re starting a new daycare or school, any big significant change in their child’s routine can be really disruptive and it can be helpful to kind of wait until those transition phases have settled down. I always say big transitions are like shaking a snow globe.
(51:52):
All the snow goes everywhere and you have to sort of wait for all of it to settle before starting another big transition. You don’t have to, but it’s helpful too. So it could be more successful if either a sibling’s coming, maybe give potty training a try before they come, but if it’s not going to work at that moment, don’t push it. But don, you can. If you know a big transition’s coming up, you could try potty training ahead of time or you can intentionally wait until after. But doing it during is like it’s just a lot of layers for a kid to be holding onto at once. Also, forget the child. We as parents, this is a process that requires a lot of presence, a lot of self-regulation, a lot of managing our own stuff, and also just a lot of time and attention. So if you are really, really stressed out, if you don’t have a lot of time, maybe there’s some really intense stuff going on with your work or in your relationship or maybe whatever is going on for you. If you aren’t in a place where you can really be present and do this, wait, deal with that first, get yourself grounded and then go and work on this.
(53:05):
And then if the family scheduled is really inconsistent, I’d work on finding some regularity and rhythm to the schedule before establishing a routine for potty training, travel, vacation changes in jobs, all that kind of stuff. You need to have some rhythm to the days that they’re all kind of similar for this to be as optimally set up as possible. If you’re seeing really frequent accidents despite consistent efforts around potty training, if you’re having immense power struggles, if your child’s having, they started having success, but now they’re really significantly regressing, these would be all good signs that, let’s take a pause, let’s let the dust settle on this and then reevaluate, come up with a little bit of a tweak to our strategy and then retry again. And finally, I think it’s just really, really important as parents to keep kind of like a healthy separation between us and this process. It’s really easy. Sometimes we can project a lot of fears onto this and urgency onto this and stress onto this, and even our own sense of self-worth and efficacy as parents onto this process. And that is just adding to an already challenging thing to introduce to the family. So remember your child’s potty learning journey. It is not a referendum on your worth or your skill as a parent.
(54:56):
Every kid is going to have a different experience. And the best thing that you can really bring to this is a sense of trust. Trust. It’s one of the most important variables for success. Trust that your kid can handle the ups and downs of this trust that you can handle the ups and downs of this and trust that your kid is going to get this at their pace, their timing in their way. That is so important. Remember, doubt and fear can really create self-fulfilling prophecies because what we focus our attention on is where all of our energy flows. If we’re focused on all the things that could go wrong or all the things that aren’t going right, all of our energy is kind of flowing into that, and that’s where all the attention and buzz is going to be around. And it can create this really difficult experience around potty training and it can actually derail the process.
(55:59):
But to that same extent, that doubt and fear can create a self-fulfilling prophecy that derails it. The same time, trust can create a self-fulfilling prophecy that leads to success. It’s not woo woo, it’s not like we’re manifesting potty training. It’s just that when we believe our kid is going to get there, we just show up with a different type of energy to the situation. We’re more regulated, we’re calmer. Things just feel less pressured and low stakes. And guess what? When our kid feels that it’s just easier to go to the bathroom. So you’ve got this and your kid has got this, and I would love to know what you guys think about this. And so send me questions, email me or send me a DM on Instagram and Dr. Sarah Bren, and let me know how your potty training journey is going.
(57:01):If you enjoyed listening to this conversation, I want to hear from you, share your thoughts and your feedback with me by scrolling down to the ratings and review section on your Apple Podcasts app or whatever app you’re listening on. And let me know what you think of this episode or the show in general, your support means the absolute world to me, and just a simple tap of five stars can make a real impact in how the show gets reached by parents everywhere. So thank you so much for listening and don’t be a stranger.
