New Year, New Goal – Potty Training

We are excited to introduce you to our new blog!  This will be a forum to interact with our families and others that might be interested in our helpful articles, tips and resources.

With the New Year upon us, New Year’s resolutions are a great way to start making changes in our lives and the lives of our children.

Toileting is one of the most challenging skills to teach our kiddos. It can be an overwhelming task. It may be messy and time consuming, however once it is accomplished it can be extremely rewarding not only for you but for your child.  It will boost your child’s confidence and increase his or her independence every day and for you, no more diapers!

Is Your Child Ready?

Before starting the training, there are several basic skills that the child must possess for the training to be successful.  Some of these basic skills are:

• Can follow simple directions (come here, sit down).
• Can sit in a chair 3-5 minutes.
• Can get on and off the potty seat, toilet or step stool easily (you must make sure the process is a positive one to begin with).
• Can wait at least 1 ½ hours between eliminations.
• Most of the time your child is consistent with the time he/she eliminates.

Whether you have tried it before or not, make the decision and stick with the plan. As many parents, have experienced, the result is well worth the effort.

• Be consistent.
• Toilet training should be a priority.
• Set time aside to be able to work on the task. Vacation time would be a great time to focus on it!
• Involve everyone who is involved with your child. Babysitter, teachers, family members.
• Think of items/activities that can be used as reinforcers.

For our next blog post, we will be providing steps on how to tackle this task. The first step we will be talking about is Recording Eliminations. Stay tuned and please share with us your comments.  View Part 2 of our post here.