Tips for toilet training.

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Use a toilet step for girls and boys.

Boys need to stand up to pee, you may find a toilet step useful to achieve this. You can purchase toilet aids for boys on-line to help make sure the pee goes in the toilet and not on the floor, this also makes the process lots of fun.

A toilet training seat will help your Child to feel comfortable, safe and secure when using an adult sized toilet.

A potty can be confusing to a Child as the only place they will encounter one is in their homes. A toilet training seat and a toilet step are a much easier and quicker way to a successful outcome.

A ‘pull-up’ to a Child is just another name for a nappy. ‘Accidents’ are a part of the learning process and a Child will become familiar and confident with how to stop and hold a pee/poo.

Let the Child go to the toilet with you, they learn by example.

Don’t be afraid to go out without a nappy, you are helping your Child to understand ‘toilet procedures’

Make sure to give the Child lots of opportunities to use the toilet both at home and outside.

When you dress your Child assess the clothing they are wearing, can they pull down their underwear easily to avoid that ‘rush’ to the toilet and be successful?

Always, always make toileting fun, sing songs, make up silly rhyming words, wash hands, use a sticker reward chart and most of all use lots of praise.

 

Using the toilet is a fundamental and important part of your Childs learning and development.

 

1. physiological development (bladder and bowel control)

2. motor skills

3. his/her cognitive and verbal development and

4. emotional & social awareness.

1. Physiological Development (Bladder and Bowel Control):

In order for your child to be able to eliminate when s/he wants to (voluntary vs. involuntary), her/his sphincter muscles have to be developed / mature enough to delay excretion for a brief period of time. All my research including the American Academy of paediatrics say that children’s elimination muscles reach full maturity somewhere between 12-24 months, and the average age of maturity is 18 months.

So how is a parent to know if a child's elimination muscles are mature?

Your child's behaviour and actions will guide you in knowing how your child is developing in this area.

Around his/her first birthday, your child will begin to recognize the sensation of a full rectum or bladder, signalling the need to eliminate. You observe this awareness through their behaviour of squatting and grunting when having a BM and tugging at the diaper when urinating. At this age, they may not be able to delay elimination, but they need to make the connection between the feeling of fullness and the act of excretion or urination.

On the average, at about 18 months, your child's sphincter muscles mature and now your child has the ability to delay excretion for a brief period of time. Night time bowel control is usually achieved first, followed by day time bowel and bladder control and finally night time bladder control.

Potty training concepts.com

Please feel free to talk to a member of staff about supporting this process.