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Parenting
with Gary & Anne Marie: Toddlers
Potty Training: Bowel training first?
In North America, bowel
training usually follows bladder training. Yet for many children around the
world, bowel training is initiated first, because it is easier to control. The
bowel signal usually allows a child more time to react than the bladder signal.
It is also easier for a child to control a solid mass than a liquid. Here is
the thinking behind early bowel training.
For most toddlers, bowel
movements (referred to as BMs), are considerably less frequent but more regular,
and thus more predictable. Most moms can predict with a minimal amount of observation
when their toddlers will have a bowel movement. This is usually right after
breakfast or lunch. Because of this natural predictability, in some Asian cultures
children are bowel-trained as early as 12-14 months old.
In actual practice, of course,
the child is not so much trained in bowel control as the mother is trained in
recognizing the predictability of her child's daily movements. She then takes
advantage of that fact and places her child on a potty chair during the time
he is most likely to have a movement. This is not a planned event for the child,
only for Mom. However, the child begins to integrate a cause-and-effect behavior
that would not be present if training was postponed.
Many of our Asian associates
train their children in this precise way with great success and very little
stress, because messy habits never had time to get established. Usually they
become bowel trained within 1-2 months. Bladder training follows when all signs
of day readiness are present. This is usually after 22 months.
Most parents who have chosen
to read Potty Training 1· 2 ·3 are working with their toddler
and are thus past the late infant phase of training. (Although there is always
the next child.) But the basic principles of bowel training first can apply
to a toddler. The same outcome occurring for the child living in Singapore or
Beijing can also occur with a 2-year-old child living in Minneapolis or Moncks
Corner, South Carolina. At some point between infancy and early toddlerhood,
your child stopped having bowel movements at random times, including at night,
and transitioned with greater regularity to one or two during the day. Because
of newly acquired predictability, a mother can anticipate with a great deal
of accuracy her 20-month-old child's "normal" time of bowel elimination.
If this is right after your child's mealtime, for example, consider sitting
him on the potty right after his meal.
In truth you are initially
only passively training your child to use his anal muscle. Like our Asian mothers,
you are creating the habit of familiarity of going in the potty rather than
in his pants. This type of training is predominately repetitive in nature, leading
to right habits, which eventually lead to an acquired skill. The idea here is
to get your child accustomed to eliminating in the potty and staying clean,
so that a messy diaper becomes uncomfortable to the child, if not completely
unnatural.
The single most important
factor for this type of bowel training is keeping the child engaged in an activity.
If he has the habit of eliminating after breakfast or lunch, have him sit on
the potty. Give him a puzzle or toy for a few minutes to keep him occupied while
sitting. It is not a bad idea to have the child sit on the potty after every
meal to take advantage of the gastrocolic reflex. (This is the peristaltic wave
in the colon that is induced by the entrance of food into the stomach.) Hopefully
your son or daughter will release into the potty chair with some regularity.
The potty chair might also be placed in front of a favorite video. That will
help keep him in one place.
Eating obviously is a pleasurable
activity, and one that often takes 20 to 30 minutes. Having your child sit on
a booster potty chair while eating is another alternative, although not necessarily
the best. That is a long sit time, but if it is when your child normally goes,
then that is what you will need to do.
Advantages. There are some advantages to starting with bowel training.
- For Mom, it becomes
a welcome relief and gives a sense of accomplishment in what is considered
the worst part of potty training, changing messy pants or diapers. Since toddlers
will go only twice a day on average, you can eliminate half the mess that
requires cleaning even if you catch only one of the two opportunities.
- Your child gains a sense
of personal accomplishment when releasing his waste into a potty seat instead
of his diaper. This also prepares the way to releasing his urine into the
potty seat.
- While having a bowel
movement, the child will often release his bladder, reinforcing the habit
of using the potty seat. From there it is a short step to complete bladder
and bowel control.
- The final advantage
is that potty training can take place in a time slot that includes other activities.
Bowel control training can be added to a general period of activity, such
as book reading or a meal time.
Disadvantages. The
disadvantages to starting with bowel training are few, but noteworthy.
- To make this approach
work, vigilance is required. You cannot train one day and skip the next. It
might take weeks or even months until your child appreciates the training
and volunteers to use the potty seat at other times.
- Because so much emphasis
is placed on catching the child in the act of going, his actual understanding
of voluntary bowel control might be lost or delayed in process.
- One or two successes
in the potty seat will not guarantee the child has learned to control his
bowel muscles. Perhaps he went this morning because he happened to be sitting
on the potty seat, and you caught him at the right time. That does not always
translate into the child desiring to use the potty seat later that day.
- Since the times are
fairly fixed when a child will have a bowel movement, some moms feel very
confined by the process. It does require a morning and noontime ritual, and
there is no substitute for this. Someone has to be there to get the child
ready, oversee the process, and clean up the mess afterwards.
- Finally, even with all
your effort, you still have many wet diapers to change daily. It can be frustrating
to think you are putting so much effort into training but still are not yet
making progress toward training your child to urinate in his potty seat.
Footnote:
Content of the
article references information from Potty Training 1-2-3 written
by Gary and Anne Marie Ezzo. All rights reserved.
Article
by Gary Ezzo / Anne Marie Ezzo
