Toilet Training Troubles

The following is a selection from the book Raising Children Who Think For Themselves by Dr. Eisa Medhus. From the chapter titled "Specific Child Rearing Challenges - How to Handle Them to Encourage Self-Direction", the following introduction is offered.

"The best way to make children good is to make them happy." - Oscar Wilde

Here are some inner-directed suggestions that will help with some of the most trying child-rearing difficulties we may stumble upon. All of these approaches are designed to preserve your children's ability to rely on internal dialogue instead of external influences to assess and correct their behavior. Using this section as a ready reference will help you raise a self-directed child, even if it means carrying the book, tattered and tear-stained, to the market, in the car, or at home. There are some challenges that, I hope you will never have to face, but others will be as inevitable as a pimple on prom night.

To get to self-direction, there are a few universal caveats for every one of the situations that follow. First, our children need to understand and agree with both the need for the furl and the consequence for breaking it. Only when they come to agree with our rules, through their own internal dialogue, will they become self-directed. Second, look to your own parenting strategy as the possible source of some of the problem. Are you over-controlling or over-protective? Either trait can elicit an externally directed response, as your children react to an unhealthy situation. Third, remember for all these parenting challenges how important it is for you as parents, to model the right behavior. If you're expecting your children to act one way and you act another, the double standard will throw a monkey wrench into their whole internal dialogue machinery.

And lastly, don't forget to laugh.

Why they do it

Trust me, your children aren't going to come home from football practice wanting their Pull-ups changed. Children potty-train at different rates, because they don't all mature at the same time rates, emotionally or physically.

Logical consequences

The only consequence your children should experience is the fact that they have something warm, wet, or stinky in their diapers. Some kids can't bear it, and others couldn't give a hang.

Solutions towards self-direction

Never tease, shame, threaten, nag, or punish your children for their toilet training accidents. Berating them only creates a relentless externally directed power struggle that makes the Korean War look like a lovers' spat. And never reward or bribe your children for their toilet training successes.

Give your children your unconditional love regardless of their toilet training status.
If they're old enough, ask them how they feel about their toilet training progress. One hopes they won't be so old you can ask them to prepare a dissertation on the subject.

Don't compare siblings in the trials and tribulations of their toilet training
.
If your children are stinking up the area with their smelly little diapers and they refuse to have them changed, give them a choice, "You can either let me change you, or you can go outside until you're ready for a clean diaper."

Use observations when they're successful, "Well, you made it to the potty on time! I bet your glad to be wearing dry pants instead of wet ones."