If you know how to ride a bicycle, you probably remember how challenging it was to master this skill. First, you had to learn how to steer and pedal. Then, you had to put these two skills together while trying to keep your balance, while trying to do it smoothly.
Before your child can use the potty independently, they must learn to coordinate an equally complex combination of physical and cognitive (thinking) tasks.
They need to:
become familiar with the necessary "equipment" (their body and its functions)
recognize signals from their body that they need to pee or poop
understand what those sensation means
picture what they want to do (use the potty)
remember where the potty is located
make a plan to get there
begin to use it
stay on the potty long enough to finish
communicate their needs and ask for help if needed
This requires both memory and concentration. Throughout this learning process, they must be able to understand your explanations, directions and responses.
Body awareness
All of this learning takes time. The first steps in this process involve bodily sensation—the ability to associate an inner feeling of fullness with the bowel movement or urination that results. This usually take place at around 12 to 18 months.
Parents can help build this awareness by talking about what is happening. Simple comments such as, "You're peeing," or "You need to poop," help children connect physical sensations with the body's natural functions.
As time passes, your child may show discomfort over a dirty diaper, try to remove their diaper or resist being diapered, and otherwise show their growing body awareness.
They may start to enjoy (and even insist on) spending time without clothes on, and by age two will have become quite interested in all of their body parts, especially the "private" ones used to eliminate. Such interest in the body suggests a new openness to your explanations of how the body works and a desire to "name the equipment."
It also sets the stage for learning through experience. Just letting them sit on the potty until they happen to have a bowel movement—and then hearing you say how pleased you are by what they did—is likely to help your child connect the need to poop with potty use more effectively than any long-winded explanation.
Making plans and carrying them out
Understanding the link between needing to eliminate and doing so is an important first step in toilet training readiness. Still, more development is needed before your child can begin picturing the potty when they need to go, plan how they will get to the bathroom and pee into the potty, and remember their plan long enough to carry it out.
Symbolic thought & problem solving
These next steps in the developmental process require the capacity for picturing actions
(symbolic thought), planning
(problem solving) and memory—abilities that begin to surface at age one but become much better established by age two or even later.
One of the first signs that your child is able to think of an object when it isn’t there, for example, is at around 12 months, when they begin to wail every time you leave the room. For the first time, they can picture you and know that you continue to exist even though they can’t get to you, and it is the frustration caused by this understanding that makes them cry.
In the coming months, their brain will develop to the point where they realize they can crawl or toddle to the next room to find you—and walk to the bathroom to find their potty.
By age two, they may routinely picture their potty when they need to use the bathroom. They may even know how to find the potty when they want to. They may still need your support, however, in making the associations required to
decide to go to the potty when they feel the urge and accomplishing their mission before other thoughts or events distract them.
By age two and a half or three, your child’s evolving interest in problem solving will support their ability to accomplish this series of actions on their own. Solving problems requires picturing a solution and planning a way to achieve it.
You may notice these problem-solving abilities throughout daily life. Your child may figure out how to reach a favorite toy, negotiate for an extra cookie or solve challenges during play. These same skills can help them succeed with potty training.
More complex thinking
A number of other cognitive developments boost your child’s ability to use the potty successfully beginning at around age two and a half or three.
Memory & imagination
Their memory will have improved a great deal, enabling them not only to remember where they are headed when they start toward the bathroom but to recall previous toilet-training experiences and benefit from them.
Their imagination has expanded, allowing them to explore potty use through imaginary play with stuffed animals, dolls and puppets. (An expanded imagination may also create new problems in toilet training, leading to such anxieties as the fear of a flushing toilet or the fear of being flushed away.)
By age three they will have grown somewhat better at interrupting their focus on another task to go to the bathroom and resist distraction on the way. Chances are they will have gained the verbal skills needed, too, to communicate any problems or confusion they are experiencing, to express any fears that may have developed, and to ask for adults’ help and guidance when they need it.
Remember
Potty training depends on more than physical development. A child's thinking, problem-solving, memory and language skills all play important roles in toilet training readiness. Watching for these developmental milestones can help you choose the right time to begin and set your child up for success.
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