Perspectives on toileting with author of ‘Oh Crap! Potty Training’
When to start potty training
Jessica: That is so wise. I love hearing that. I think that that is just the state of parenting today with social media, is just… It can be really overwhelming. You’ve talked about really making it a parent decision about when to start potty training. Can you lean into that a little bit more?
Jamie: Yeah, so here’s the deal. Literally, it would be wonderful… First of all, child-led is a really great concept. And I’m a home schooler, I would define myself as a hippy dippy parent. I am in that realm, attachment parenting. But child-led makes no sense. And I always… I have this analogy in the book which is, if you were to put your child in their car seat in the back seat and say, “Tell mommy how to get to the store,” you would be lost in no time. So to make your life child-led, you’re the adult, you have been on the planet longer, you know things, so you really have to be adult-led in your household. Now, you could be interest-led, and that’s a different topic. The problem with child-led is that… There’s a couple of things with potty training. One is we have become so busy. Never before have two, three, four, five-year-olds been a market, and I know we’re coming off the pandemic, so activities were halted, but kids have activities, parents work outside the home, these things make us extremely busy and we sometimes miss the child’s cues. So almost all children are “ready” between 20 and 30 months. Usually you’ll see some sort of signs between 18 and 24 months, and those things are subtle.
And so I think somehow over the last 10, 20 years, those signs have gotten confusing. So your child wanting to be in the bathroom with you, wanting to play with the toilet paper, wanting to flush, those are the signs, and parents kind of skip right over them or just don’t notice them because life is so busy. So in that sense, I say we look at a timeframe, ‘cause just like with walking, we’re going to follow the child, but within nine months to 16 months is when a kid usually starts to walk or cruise. If your kid gets to 18 months and they’re not walking or cruising, you’re going to be like, “Hmm, maybe I need to sort of push this along a little.” You know what I mean? So I think with potty training, it’s good to have an age range in there.