Marjorie Thompson didn’t force any of her seven children to use the toilet.
She waited until they seemed ready and willing–between ages 2 and 3 1/2– then enlisted the help of the “Doody Duck” to encourage them. She told the children that “Doody Duck”–a blue finger towel embroidered with a picture of a duck–would be happy if they used the toilet.
Her oldest son, now 16, took the bait and learned right away, at age 2. It seemed as though her youngest, now 4, would never be trained. But he was, by 3 1/2. Eventually each child learned to use the toilet, said Thompson, associate dean of biology at Brown University.
It wasn’t a big deal. But toilet training has become a big deal recently, thanks to a debate between two of the nation’s leading experts on child care. The issue: at which age should a child be toilet-trained.
John Rosemond, a family psychologist and columnist, says children should be trained around age 2 and, “it’s a slap to the intelligence of a human being” to allow a child to continue soiling himself past age 2 1/2. “There is simply no excuse or justification for this,” he says.
But Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, a pediatrician and author, continues to advise parents, as he has for years, to wait until a child is ready to use the toilet–even if it takes until he or she is 3 or 4 years old.
Rosemond takes issue with this advice, especially since Brazelton is a spokesman for Pampers, which manufactures diapers and disposable training pants big enough for “babies” over 35 pounds–the size of an average 3- or 4-year-old.
Brazelton defends his position with the diaper company, which funds some of his research, and maintains that some children simply aren’t ready for training until they’re 3 or 4. In fact, in newspaper stories and on the Pampers Web site–http://www.pampers.com/–he argues that rushing a child into toilet-training can cause long-term problems with incontinence and constipation.
He also says parents should ignore the critics and take their cues from their child. After all, he notes on www.pampers.com/, “I’ve never known any grownup who wasn’t potty trained. . . except people my age.”
The two men faced off last summer in USA Today and again recently in The New York Times, and the debate has now attracted the attention of television personality Barbara Walters and Time magazine, according to Rosemond’s wife, Willie Rosemond.
It’s also the topic of many a debate among parents and non-parents in the home, in the workplace and in doctors’ offices around the country.
Everyone has an opinion, but there is little consensus.
Some parents, especially those of grown children, have boasted that their children were toilet-trained by the time they were a year old–a claim some experts dismiss as impossible.
Everyone seems to agree that today’s children are toilet-trained at a later age, though it’s not clear why. Some blame parents for not being more strict. Others cite the increasing number of working parents who don’t have time or who rely on child-care providers to help with the process. Still others, especially Rosemond, blame experts such as Brazelton for recommending that parents wait until their child wants to be trained.
As Rosemond says, “Waiting until age 3 insults the child’s intelligence, delays mastery in other areas (i.e. toilet training is requisite to acquiring, among other things, certain social skills) and prolongs the child’s dependency upon his parents.”
Mary Ann Shallcross, a 27-year veteran child-care provider who is head of the Child Care Connection child-care centers, added her opinion based on her experience of training “about a thousand children” over the years.
Shallcross, who also hosts the Doctor Daycare program on radio station WNRI-AM, says she believes parents need to wait until a child is ready to take on the toilet–usually between ages 2 and 3.
Choose a quiet time in the child’s life, she suggests–for example, not after the arrival of a new baby, during a divorce or during the holidays. Then introduce the child to the potty seat or toilet gradually, having him or her use it at regular intervals, while reading to the child about potty training. Most of all, she said, make it fun.
Shallcross said her strategy is to take the child’s diaper off for the day and put on a pair of sweatpants instead–no pullups or training pants needed. Then put the child on a toilet every 20 minutes–praising when he or she goes the bathroom but never criticizing when it doesn’t happen. Simply try again 20 minutes later.
If after 48 hours the child is making strides toward potty-training, Shallcross continues with the process and, once the child has mastered the toilet, buys him or her “big kid” underwear to celebrate. Otherwise, she waits a couple of months before trying all over again.
