The Third Law of Pediatrics
For many families, toilet training seems to be a huge challenge, while for other families it seems almost effortless. Why is that? One conventional answer, often passed on by pediatricians, is this: when it doesn’t go well the parents must just be doing it wrong and if they just strictly followed one set of nutty rules or another everything would just work perfectly. I don’t think so. First of all, nothing works perfectly. Second, the nutty rules may seem plausible to the author, but are mostly just made up. Third, no two kids and no sets of parents are exactly the same and a lot of different issues, both physical and psychological, impact the ease and likely success of toilet training (but let me add some reassuring words: sooner or later, virtually everybody is successful at this developmental task).
So, having just said that advice on this subject is mostly foolish and futile, I can’t resist giving you mine.
As a pediatrician I feel it is time to introduce to the world my Third Law of Pediatrics (which actually might even be right): the average age of toilet training around the world is directly proportional to the latitude. The further you go from the Equator, the slower kids are to toilet-train. Now, this is more obvious than it might seem at first. The further from the Equator, the colder it is and the more clothes must be worn. The more layers of clothes, the harder it is for children to deal with toileting needs independently. If parental involvement is required, the child must find the parent, pull on a sleeve until the mother or father can disengage themselves from the task with which they are engaged (which is surely more interesting than facilitating a child’s peeing or pooping). Then the parent has to hike the kid into the john (please, no letters from parents whose parents thoughtlessly named them John) and get this process on the road. Most kids, confronted with this sequence a few times, will quickly come to say “The heck with it, this is just not worth the trouble.”
The corollary to my Third Law (which is frankly more useful than the law itself) is this: do it in the summer. If it’s at all possible, do it by letting the kid run around naked in the back yard. After a week or two of running around without a wet, poopy diaper most kids are powerfully motivated (without coaching) to move on in their toilet training. In Connecticut, the right moment for most kids seems to be about 2½, though among the Digo, an Equatorial African tribe, there is probably something developmentally wrong if a child isn’t toilet-trained by 9 months. As Chinese parents have learned (and I don’t know if this is still as true as it used to be) clothing which facilitates independence -- I’m talking about equipping kids with split pants instead of diapers -- can uncouple toilet training from latitude.
One other thing is probably worth pointing out: in the war between the generations, it’s probably best if children never learn that they own the atom bomb. It always pays to be low-key, patient, and unintrusive as you gently facilitate your child’s acquisition of this skill.
Sydney Z. Spiesel, PhD MD is a pediatrician in Woodbridge, CT and a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Yale School of Medicine