The 7 Most Common Potty Training Mistakes

Sean March 29, 2010 - 1 Comment
Potty Training

Are you like most parents, dreading potty training and living in fear that the experience will be filled with friction?

Are you worried that your toddler’s stubborn will is stronger than your own resolve?

Don’t fret. Prepare instead.

Potty training is a special time in your child’s development, when you can easily deepen your connection and strengthen your bond. But this can only happen if you approach it from the right mindset.

Otherwise, you run the risk of stumbling into an endless battle of wills, with two tiny armies, each unwilling to surrender.

Potty training can’t be avoided. Sooner or later your child will learn to use the potty, just like all the other big boys and girls.

Eventually you will win, but at what cost?

Done well, potty training is an enjoyable time, loaded with glee and laughter, growth and learning. Done poorly, potty training can turn into a long struggle where the finish line seems like only a suggestion.

Don’t let this happen to you!

These are the 7 most common mistakes that parents make when teaching their children to use the toilet. Avoid them all, and your potty training experience will be both fun and fruitful.

1) Initiating Potty Training During a Stressful Time for Your Family

Are you in the midst of a move, introducing a new member to the family, or in the middle of a major life transition?

Your child is sensitive, and even small changes can feel BIG to them. Learning to use the potty is a significant step in their learning process. Beginning at a time when they’re already feeling tender is potentially setting yourself up for a long and difficult road.

Rather than starting from nowhere, plot toilet teaching on the calendar and include your child in the planning. Make sure it fits into your life. Choose a time where you will face minimal outside factors which can negatively impact your progress.

Potty training is best when it’s smooth sailing. Stopping and starting will always make things more difficult. By minimizing the variables, you will hit the finish line faster, with fewer bumps along the way.

2) Starting Too Late

The optimum time to start potty training is different for every child, yet there does seem to be an ideal window. Start too early and communication can be difficult. Start too late, however, and you can be in for a power struggle like you’ve never seen, and will probably never forget.

The older your child, the more likely they are to display the strength of their iron will. At two years old, a child is just learning to understand their place in the world. They are getting to know their likes, dislikes, and best means for expressing their needs.

By the age of three, most toddlers understand how to get their way and are far more skilled in the art of manipulation. Tactics learned in the terrible twos are now sharpened, and can leave you feeling helpless, hopeless and downright defeated.

What is difficult at three can feel impossible at four. This is why it is always better to start too early then too late.

3) Setting Unrealistic Expectations

There are multiple pieces to the toilet training process. Many parents add stress to the situation by expecting everything to happen all at once. This can make a child nervous and lead to under-performance.

There is not a potty training switch you can flip to finish their training. If you want a positive, expedient experience, it is essential to understand that toilet training is a process and not an event!

Not only must your child learn to control their body functions enough to use the restroom in private, they will need to learn to do it in public as well. This is in addition to mastering their bowel movements and going for long periods of time without any accidents.

These are all things your child must learn before their training can be considered complete.

Yet you cannot expect it to happen all at once.

Potty training is something that is best done step-by-step. Parents who expect success happen at the speed of light, are only setting themselves up for disappointment. Though it is possible, it is rare that toilet training is entirely finished in a few days or a weekend.

Parents who understand this, and exhibit the appropriate patience, will go far in establishing a safe, comfortable environment for their child to find their own potty learning prosperity.

4) Not Doing Enough to Properly Prepare Your Child

Potty training isn’t YOU vs. THEM. It is a joint effort between parent and child, where your goal is to teach them a basic but necessary life skill.

As with any other skill you would want your child to learn, you must properly prepare them ahead of time.

Think of toilet training as teaching your child to swim. If you took your child to the pool without discussing it ahead of time, then told he or she that they need only to jump into the pool and that everything would be okay, you might succeed in getting them to comply.

But more than likely, you would face strong resistance in the form of crying, wailing, and whatever else lies in your own child’s personal grab bag of disagreement.

If you were to emotionally prepare them, however, by discussing how much fun it is to play in the water, citing their friends and peers who already know how to swim, while reminding them of the many family adventures you can have once the task has been mastered, then you will be far more likely to get them to see them splashing a whole lot sooner.

5) Expecting the Same Results for Every Sibling

People are all different.

Though we all share similarities as humans, there are countless things which make us each unique. Most important when it comes to potty training – we all absorb information in slightly different ways. What works for some will rarely, if ever, work for all.

It is essential that you treat each child as an individual. Yes, there are strategies that carry over from one child to the next, the best of which are fairly universal.

Proper modeling, appropriate patience, suitable rewards and realistic expectations will all go a long way toward successful potty training, but feeling frustrated because what worked for your daughter is not working for your son is like beating a brick wall and expecting it to budge.

If you understand ahead of time that each child is unique, and that there is a strategy that will work best for your child, then you have already won half the potty training battle.

6) Confusing Bed Wetting and Potty Training

This is a common problem facing many parents. Many people don’t realize that their children may continue to wet the bed at night, even after they are finished with potty training.

The two issues are sometimes, though not always, related.

For many families, wetting the bed is something that can continue well into toddlerhood. This is okay. Just because your child is wetting the bed at night, doesn’t mean that they are not potty trained or are incapable of remaining dry throughout the day.

As long as your child can control their bodily functions during the day, and can consistently go for long periods without any accidents, then you can consider them trained.

Knowing your child is potty trained, even though they are still wetting the bed, can help you to focus on the bedwetting issue. This will allow you to celebrate on their toilet learning success without confusing the issue.

7) Lack of Patience

Though this one goes hand in hand with #3, it deserves an entry all its own!

A lack of patience on the parent’s part can often send the potty training process down a broken road of frustration. Even without language, children are highly sensitive to their parent’s emotions.

They will feel your anger, disappointment, frustration, irritation or feelings of defeat. Sometimes, even if you believe they are well hidden.

Align your expectations ahead of time and you will minimize the chance of this happening.

Your child will probably have numerous accidents, take longer than you would like, and frustrate you to no end. At some point you will wish you never started. But you must draw a deep breath and keep right on going.

Patience is the single most important ingredient to potty training, and can define how you remember the experience. If you wish to look back with fond memories rather than shudders of horror, simple patience could make all the difference in the world.

You can do it. We know you can!