Better Late Than Early?

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When is the best age to start toilet learning in children? A study published in the April 2003 issue of Pediatrics reports that starting intensive toilet training before 27 months did nothing to hasten the time that toilet learning was completed – all it did was to lengthen the months of toilet learning. Intensive toilet training was defined as asking the child more than 3 times a day to use the toilet.

This study was conducted by researchers from Children’s Hospital Philadelphia among hundreds of middle-class children living in the Philadelphia suburbs. The results might have been quite different in other groups or in other countries. Even in similar groups, individual children mature at different rates and in different ways. Still, this report reminds us that kids will learn to use the potty when they are ready, and not before. Our job us to teach them and support them, not to force them.

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Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 2010-10-01 18:32.

What should we do

My son had done really well with his potty training and now he has regressed. My son doesn't want to go to the bathroom. He is constantly making urinary accidents. At playdates, health club day care being there one hour at a time, at home. I feel like it isn't that he is too busy having fun. He doesn't want to go to the bathroom before we leave anywhere and then has to go right away. he knows it is wrong. He hides from us we are never mean. we don't want the "complex"