How to teach a child to the pot?
When a child starts to go to the pot, in the eyes of his parents, he becomes “very big”, so the desire of the mother to teach the child to write and cod into the toilet object as soon as possible is understandable. But the process of schooling is quite complicated. For it to be successful, parents will have to act consistently and in a timely manner.
When is it time to teach?
There is no rule in medicine, pedagogy, or other sciences related to children regarding the timing of comprehension of toilet science. For this reason, no one will say exactly when the child should learn to relieve the need of the pot.
Children begin to write and crap in the pot consciously. This happens at the moment when the cortical layer of the brain ripens to the extent necessary. From birth, children do not know how to control their urination and bowel movements. They have unconditioned reflexes, and they will become conditional when the brain is fairly mature. For this reason There is no reason to teach toilet trips to the pot of children up to a year.
Attempts by parents to teach a child to go to the pot earlier than a year can be dangerous in that parental persistence in no way leads to the transition of the unconditioned reflex to the conditioned one. And after a year at such children “failures” begin - they protest, persistently write in their pants, although earlier, according to parents, they were accustomed to the pot.
At the command of a mom or dad, a child can theoretically learn to write and crap. But when the reflex starts to “grow up”, the need to do this will appear in certain situations. This will not happen on command, but with signals from certain sphincters that appear when the bladder or intestines fill. Therefore, the baby will begin to protest desperately if the parents demand to write, when you don’t want to write at all.
The age at which you should teach the child to the pot should be determined at the family council. But parents must be aware of whether their baby is ready for the upcoming changes. In most cases, attempts to teach a child to go to the toilet immediately after a year are unsuccessful.
There is a definite pattern between the age of schooling and the duration of the process. The sooner parents start making such attempts, the longer and traumatic the whole process will be.
It is believed that it is best to make the first attempts to acquaint the crumbs with a pot in a year and a half and later. Babies aged 2-3 years old learn to pot faster. At the same time, no one guarantees that attempts will be one-time and immediately successful - most likely, you will have to take several approaches with interruptions.
Determine the best age for a baby can be based on some signs of psychological and physiological readiness of the crumbs. You should not think that with active physical exercises and developmental activities with a baby, a mother can accelerate the process of maturation of the cerebral cortex. It matures with age, and here no less important role plays.
Whether a child is ready to study toilet wisdom can be determined by the following signals:
- the child has developed a certain definite mode of emptying the bowels: he goes to the toilet for a great need every day at about the same time (plus or minus a few hours);
- the child learned to endure - after changing the diaper, it remains fresh dry for at least one and a half hours;
- the baby has learned to understand what the parts of his body are called;
- the baby already knows what the verbs mean “to write” and “crap” performed by adults;
- the child became intolerant and annoyed with a dirty or wet diaper;
- the baby has learned to take off his pants himself or has already unbuttoned his own diaper;
- the crumb is not afraid of the bathroom: it enters with pleasure and interest.
In addition, by the time of the start of learning, the kid should be able to indicate his desires. The fact that you want to poke, he does not have to tell in words. But some of the natural and inherent to this process actions and sounds of the child will be issued and produced necessarily. Some go to another room and stand in a corner to poke in silence and peace without witnesses, other children groan defiantly and at the same time enthusiastically shift cubes.
If the above symptoms are, then the child is ready. But his mom and dad should be ready too: you need to free up a sufficient amount of time and take a two-week vacation to spend all your free time during schooling. You also need to replenish the home reserves of motherwort, valerian or Corvalol, and also be patient.
Popular techniques
There are many methods of teaching the child to the pot: there are quick and gradual, rather long, but quite effective. Parents are most often interested in how to teach a child to go to the pot quickly. The American pediatrician Gina Ford can help in this. Her pediatric doctor invented for young patients between the ages of one and a half and two and a half years.
You need to spend on training for exactly seven days. The results should appear in a week, if you do everything as Mrs. Ford prescribed, and she planned out the whole process for just a week.
So, to start learning you will need a beautiful and comfortable pot and a lot of parental patience.
1 day
When the baby wakes up, they get rid of the wet and heavy diaper at night. At the same time, the child is told about a heavy and wet diaper, because this is not at all what he needs, since the baby has grown. After removing the dirty diaper, there is no need to rush to put a clean one on it - it is better to plant the child on a pre-warmed, warm pot and carry away something. At this stage you need to sit on the pot for at least 10 minutes.
It is not excluded that the child will categorically refuse the pot. There is nothing wrong with that. In this case, in the morning, the mother should have a favorite toy of her son or daughter - a teddy bear or dog can easily complete the task for the child. Mom needs to plant a Tuzika or Mishka in a pot and with a discreet movement to put some water in it from behind. Then the toy needs to be removed from the pot, enthusiastically praise it for the right thing to do, show the child that there is some water in the pot, and go to the toilet with the baby to drain the pot.
After breakfast, you should offer the pot to the baby and if you refuse to do the trick with the Bear or the Hare again. And so it is necessary to do every 15 minutes throughout the day. It is better to refuse to walk this day, a diaper can be worn only for daytime sleep and night. When the baby sits on the pot himself, you must loudly praise him, and if he even pees into it, then the praises must be generous, loud, with gifts and prizes.
If in the intervals between the sentences of the pot, the child is written in his pants or does it on the carpet in the living room, then it is not worth scolding him. You just need to change the pants.
2 day
The first and second day according to the Ford method are the most difficult periods. They require a constant presence from the mother. On the second day, everything is repeated in the same way as the first day. For a change, you can add flushing water in the toilet - entrust it to your child, he will love the process. Do not forget to praise the child.
3 day
The third day is a very important one, because he will offer the crumbs a new task. Now the baby should start walking, but not alone, but with a pot. For example, a child in 8 months needs to walk twice a day - let him take a pot with him.Of course, this option is well suited for the summer season, for spring and early autumn, but not for winter. If it is cold outside the window, it is better to refrain from walking for a few more days.
Children's doctor Gina Ford argues that you can not "give up the slack" and put a diaper on the child, even if it is a walk, as this will only convince the little one about the existence of some alternatives.
4-6 day
These are the days of consolidation of the acquired skill. The pot still accompanies the baby everywhere: at home and on a walk. But gradually the intervals between the landing on the pot can be increased, bringing up to half an hour.
7 day
On the last day you should not offer a pot, because this is a summing up. The baby must designate, by his behavior or a purposeful request, the need for a pot as certain physiological desires arise. If for a long time the crumb does not ask for the pot, but remains dry, then he needs to gently remind the pot.
If a child is trained according to a quick technique, it is not necessary to wake him up at night for planting on the pot. To wake up or not, parents decide. If the pussy falls asleep heavily, it is best not to wake him up at night, limited to using the usual disposable diaper.
It should be noted that fast methods are not suitable for all children. Kids with an excitable psyche, prone to hysterics and stubbornness, can "fight" all week, and the result will not be achieved.
There are also slower, but softer methods for the child's psyche that are perfect for those who are not in a hurry.
First of all, it is worthwhile to place the pot in the toilet. Every time you need to get there baby and turn on the water in the tap. The noise of flowing water leads to a desire to empty the bladder.
First, place the pot in the nursery - let the child get used to the new item. Then you need to teach a crumb to sit on it - you can even in clothes. When the baby understands that a new item is safe, he will get confidence in him.
It is necessary to motivate the landing on the pot, to make it interesting. For example, read a fairy tale while the baby is sitting, singing songs, making a performance in a finger theater. You can do anything, as long as the child was interested to sit on the pot.
You can show by example what they do with the toilet. If a boy grows in a family, then let him go to the toilet room with his dad, and in the case when a girl grows up - with his mother. The desire to imitate adults in 1.5-3 years is very great. Also younger children like to imitate older brothers and sisters.
All these methods are good because they can be combined with each other, use one or several at the same time or alternately.
Main steps
The stages that parents and baby have to go to the goal depend on many factors: the persistence of the parents, the readiness of the baby and his age. At 5-11 months, neither the boy nor the girl is better off planting on the pot, since the process of forming the conditioned reflex has not yet begun. One-year-old baby can be landed once, and if the attempt does not succeed, then postpone training the child to the pot for a later time.
The older the child, the faster he will understand what is wanted of him. But after the diapers, to which he managed to get used, it will be quite difficult to quickly master a new skill. To go to the pot, these children learn better if you use slow techniques.
A child of 1 year or older will be able to start going to the pot faster if the parents are consistent and patient. To accustom can only gradually and gradually. Parents will go through the following stages:
- rejection and misunderstanding of the new subject and parental requirements;
- interest in a new subject and its capabilities;
- interest in your own body and its capabilities;
- the pleasure of the effect;
- pot acceptance and habit.
How to speed up the process?
Without the need to speed up the process is not worth it. It is difficult to prepare in advance for situations when a need arises, but it is optimal to simply not allow them.These include, for example, the need to urgently go to work and give the baby to the kindergarten, having taught the pot for a few days, the need to immediately go on a trip with the baby and other circumstances.
The less stress will be learning, the faster one stage will be replaced by another. Accordingly, the results can be achieved earlier.
Possible problems
The problem that parents may face is one: the kid will not want to go to the pot. Some children do not even want to sit on it, while others of their peers are sitting, playing, but refuse to cope with natural needs in this subject. In this case, the parents should not be upset, do not scold yourself and the baby.
First of all, you need to try to find the true reason for this behavior of the baby. It is possible that familiarity with the pot scared the child. The pot may not like the crumbs externally, it can be cold when planting or frightening (if the baby is afraid of bears, then the bear in the shape of a bear does not suit him).
A pot that is too boring will not attract the attention of the child either, and attempts by parents or other relatives to make the child cause a persistent rejection of the very idea of writing into it.
To prevent the occurrence of problems will help a thorough preliminary preparation. The kid at the time of the start of training should be pretty clean. If a crumb without enthusiasm belongs to the wet and dirty diapers and in every way requires their change, then this is a great start for training toilet skills.
Some advice will help parents to prevent the child from sustaining non-acceptance of the pot.
- A crumb must never remain on the pot alone - it can fall and hit, and this will surely be imprinted in memory, as a negative experience. The contents of the pot for the first time will cause burning curiosity. If the kid tries to smudge it, then it will be quite difficult to wean him off. Being near a mother will preclude the acquisition of such skills.
- If the child began to write or not to crap where necessary, then you should not grab it and quickly carry it to the pot - it will frighten the baby. The psychological trauma can be so great that the child closes and begins to cope with all his needs not just in his pants, but also to pre-hide somewhere from adults so that he is not grabbed, not shouted and dragged to the toilet.
- Ten minutes - this time is enough for the baby to go to the toilet. If this does not happen, then there is no point in keeping the crumbs longer. You need to let go of the child and try again a little later.
- It is not necessary to teach the child to play with a pot and a pot. Long games on the toilet fixture will create the illusion that the pot is a place for entertainment.
- Start learning should be favorable in all respects. The baby after the illness, against the backdrop of teething, immediately after moving to a new apartment, after the birth of a little brother or sister, after the divorce of the parents is very vulnerable. He can not adequately perceive the changes in the usual way of life. Potty training is better to move to another time when the psychological and physical state of the child will be more stable.
- Any issues related to the toilet, should be resolved very delicately. If a mother screams at a crumb who wrote the wrong way, if her father is ashamed of a baby who has woken up wet or has played and has accidentally wet his pants, then the process of defecation and urination will be associated with unpleasant situations. How learning will flow, 95% depends on the tactfulness of the parents and 5% of the baby.
- There is no need to demand the impossible from the baby, because the child learns to control the daily desires only at 3 years.
How to teach a child to the pot, see the following video.