Toilet Training Tips

Toilet training is a huge developmental milestone in a toddler’s life. Most Primary Schools require your child to be adequately toilet trained upon starting their first year so it’s important for parents to be prepared for teaching their children how to use the toilet. Here’s my top tips to keep in mind:

1. Learning By Example

Children copy. It’s what they do and it’s how they learn. Show them that you go to the toilet. Talk them through what you do and make it intriguing. Maybe get them to be in charge of a job such as giving you the toilet paper. Don’t feel weird about it with your toddler watching you pee, this is how they learn. The more you show them how to do it, the more they will understand when it comes to them doing it. Whatever it is that you’re trying to get your toddler to do, show them that you are going to do it as well.

2.Make It Inviting

Have a toilet bookshelf and a toilet toy so they can associate being on the toilet with fun times. Sometimes kids will have to sit on the toilet for a while as they wait for their poop and they may have to sit on the toilet quite frequently if they have not yet mastered the art of telling you when they need to go. The last thing you want is for them to associate negative feelings towards the toilet so make sure to keep it light-hearted and fun.

3. Baby Steps

There will be lots of accidents. Their whole life has been in nappies and all of a sudden you’ve taken them away, given them ‘big kid’ underpants and told them to pee in a big bowl. Having never thought about holding in a wee before and simply going in a nappy, kids naturally find it super difficult to break the habit of automatically peeing themselves! Kids will just naturally go to the toilet in their pants because that’s what they’ve been doing their whole life. The same way there were many stumbles when learning to walk, there will be many a wet pair of pants before toilet success. Don’t make a fuss about it, simply take them off, change and keep trying. You may get through 4 pairs of pants a day at the beginning. Sometimes its easier to keep them in the nappy and every 25 minutes sit them on the toilet just to do a wee check. If they go brilliant, if they don’t that's okay. When they’ve got the hang of not peeing in their nappy, you can move onto pants.

4. Do What Works

There are lots of different techniques out there that people use. When you find something that works for you stick to it. Do not feel inclined to switch because someone else said there’s a much better way. What works for your kid, works! It could be star charts, sitting and reading whilst on the toilet every 25 minutes or a cheeky little bribery every now and again. Don’t be disheartened by your tactics. If they are learning to use the toilet properly then you are doing something right!

5. Pick a good potty and a good position

There are lots of different options. Little round ones that sit on the floor, plastic ones that cover the actual toilet hole, little ladder and toilet cover combined ones. Pick a sturdy one suitable for your kids age, easy to clean and ideally doesn’t take up too much bathroom space. You can even get ones with your child’s favourite characters on them or favourite colours to make it more appealing. My main piece of advice with positioning a potty, is to make sure it’s in the bathroom space. Potty’s that are placed in the toy rooms or in the kitchen don’t tend to be that successful mainly because kids don’t associate these areas with going to the toilet they associate them with playing and eating. Kids can get easily distracted and not want to use the potty when they have all their toys in front of them. Children learn through adults, so they are far more likely to want to pee in the same area you go!

6. Introduce it in the world of play

Everything kids learn is practised through play. It is the main way children interact with objects around them, with others and with themselves so play is incredibly important. I like to use a toy and talk to it "Spiderman do you need the toilet?… Yes! Okay quick, quick, let's all go and use the toilet!”. Let your child go through all the steps in play pretending to pull down the toys trousers and sitting them on the potty, then wiping with toilet paper and flushing the toilet. Spiderman can then wash his hands and the toy gets praised for successfully going to the toilet. These repetitive forms of playing out real life situations will help secure the idea of toilet time in your child’s mind and make them fully understand what they are required to do when they need the toilet themselves.

With repetition, patience and a load of accidents later, your child will be ready and toilet trained for school! Good Luck, you’ve got this.

Written by Nanny Emmy.

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or topics you would like us to discuss in future blogs please do send an email to nannyemmyquestions@gmail.com