CHILDCARE: TOILET TRAINING
Of all the tasks of childhood, there is perhaps none that raises more anxiety for parents or causes more dread than toilet training. What should be the most natural thing in the world often turns into a dramatic struggle between parent and child. The more the parents want their child to be trained, the more he seems to resist. The inevitable peer pressure (parents’ peers, that is) adds to the tension. Difficulty in toilet training some children can sometimes be perceived as symbolizing all the difficulties that parents have in raising a child. Yet every child sooner or later acquires control over his bladder and bowels, and in retrospect parents often see that it was a largely unnecessary struggle and didn’t have to be such a big deal.
Toilet training is given a lot of emphasis by parents. There are often pressures outside the family which have the effect of raising the stakes. A kindergarten or daycare centre may have a policy of only enrolling children who are fully trained. Grandparents and relatives may in subtle and not so subtle ways suggest that young Johnnie or Sarah should be toilet trained by now, and family friends may boast that their own child, of similar age, is already toilet trained. Often it seems that the age at which the child is trained is somehow an index of the competence of the parents.
The timing of toilet training and whether it is easy or difficult depends on a combination of characteristics of both the child and the parents. The child has to be physically, neurologically and psychologically ready. This means that for most children there is little point even thinking about toilet training before about 18-24 months of age. To those prerequisites have to be added other individual factors, such as the child’s temperament and the nature of the relationship the child has with his parents. A struggle over training may be yet another episode in the lifelong battle for power and control between the child and the parents. To these factors are added parent expectations, attitudes, and parenting styles, together with their previous experience and confidence. All of these factors suggest that toilet training is very much an individual thing for each child, and it is remarkable that there is in fact reasonable consistency and predictability in the timing and staging of most children gaining control over bladder and bowels.
It is nevertheless difficult to predict for an individual child what course the toilet training will take. For some children, it seems like a non-event and everything goes very smoothly. In others, it really is a struggle for autonomy with the child resisting the very thing the parents most want. Despite the variations, most children will be mostly toilet trained by day at about 3-4 years, and at night by the time they start school. The usual course of events followed by most children is that they will achieve continence for bowels first (night then day) then daytime control over bladder function, and finally will be dry at night. There will still be accidents even after the child is supposedly trained.
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