When should you potty train your child? 1 year? 2 years....5!!??

American families seem to be quite a bit more lazy in these regards. The thought of their child peeing on the floor does not exactly go over well, but even less so the idea of taking your time as a parent to run to the toilet with your child every time they may be having a bowel movement and then having to sit and teach them what the toilet is for and how mommy and daddy use it too.

In China ALL children are potty-trained before the age of two because that is simply the way of life there. Most families do not have luxurious amenities like carpet to worry about so when it comes time to potty train, they let the child run around with out any bottoms on and thy pee on the floor until the quickly figure out what is happening and use the toilet.


I had a family with four and two year old girls. The four year old was potty trained and did everything in a timely fashion on her own. The two year old was very intelligent and noticed that her big sister was using the big girl toilet so she wanted to learn too. She would tun up to me and point at her diaper and grab me while begging me to taker her to the big girl potty. This little girl was clearly ready to do this all on her own but when I described this to her parents their reaction was that she was still young so why bother dealing with it yet if they didn't have to. They would rather continue paying for diapers than take the time to help their child onto the toilet. There was nothing I could do, I was completely out numbered. Consistency is key and if they were not willing to help then everything we would work so hard for during the day would be completely done at night.

One of my Gymboree teachers told me a story about one of the families they work with. They had a five year-old child who was still wearing diapers! They literally explained the situation as "they didn't feel like it". The teacher literally had to say that if your child is not potty-trained by five then he/she is concidered handicapped. The child was potty-trained within a week! Imagine that!


There are numerous books and articles out there by Ph.D. authors telling you when your child is or isn't ready but it is my personal opinion that your child will only be as ready as you are.