In a previous “Unruffled” episode, Janet offered advice to a parent who was struggling with potty training. That parent wrote back recently to announce her daughter’s 4-year saga had finally come to a successful conclusion… it was NOT the result of the parents following Janet’s advice, but going full speed ahead in the opposite direction. In this episode, Janet revisits the guidance she originally offered, and explains why she believes her advice was unhelpful to this family.
Transcript of “The Bad Advice I Gave About Toilet Training”
Hi, this is Janet Lansbury. Welcome to Unruffled.
Today I’m going to be talking about toilet training, or toilet learning, and my thoughts about it. Most of you, if you’ve listened here, have probably heard me say that I’m a believer in allowing kids to lead the way when it comes to what I call toilet learning. The reason I believe in that is not because that’s the only way that works. That’s absolutely not true. There are a lot of children that do fine with the parent-led toilet training in three days or whatever the books say.
The reason that I recommend child-led potty learning is that this is something that kids can autonomously achieve, with our support. There are so many things in life that kids need us for. In my view, anything that they could possibly do themselves is a precious opportunity that I believe in trying to give to children when possible. But that doesn’t mean that that’s always the way that everybody wants to do it or everybody agrees with, and definitely not the only way it works, like I said.
In this episode, I’m going to share how my advice around toilet learning was not helpful to a particular family. I did a podcast episode about a year ago called “When Kids Don’t Seem Motivated (to Potty, Crawl, or Create)”. And that was one of my weird podcasts where it’s about all sorts of different things, there were three different notes. But in all of these cases, the parents were sure that their children could do these things, that they had the ability, but it seemed like their child was not motivated. So that’s why I talked about all of them under the heading of how to encourage this motivation or really, the way I see it, helping kids get unstuck.
I offered some remedies for all of these situations, because these remedies are all about helping children get unstuck and connect with their natural motivation. Because another thing I believe is that we are born motivated, motivated to learn, motivated to build skills. This isn’t something we need our parents to make happen for us, we already have it. We know that infants are incredible learners. This has been proven in loads and loads of studies for years now, that they all have this passionate desire to learn.
In that podcast episode I talked about what gets in the way and then how I recommend helping kids get unstuck. The first remedy was trust. Having genuine trust in our child’s natural abilities and motivation, their inner direction. That also means giving them plenty of opportunities to practice those abilities. And then number two, the second remedy, was reasonable boundaries. Often that’s what’s getting in our way, or at least part of what’s getting in our way, when our child seems stuck. And number three, the thing I talk about in almost every podcast episode, welcoming kids’ feelings. Their uncomfortable feelings, the ones that can be so hard for us as parents to hear and not feel responsible to fix or to make better. Because that is part of achieving anything; kids need to be able to feel frustrated or feel uncertain or feel like it’s not working. Sometimes when we’re too uncomfortable to allow them to feel uncomfortable, we can get in the way of their natural motivation.
Anyway, all of that said, the third of these notes was about potty learning, and this is what the parent wrote to me:
My three-and-a-half-year-old is absolutely set on being in diapers “forever.” She will not so much as get near a potty and don’t even think about talking about it. She’s been physically, cognitively, and verbally ready for about one-and-a-half years now. If she woke up one morning and decided to do it, she’d teach herself in a day. We’ve completely backed off for a long time now. No pressure at all, and a genuine attitude of I don’t care, you do you. If you need me, I’m here.
However, I’m honestly doubtful that, left to her own devices, she will ever get to the point of feeling ready. I’m struggling to reconcile the let-her-lead approach with the concept of not enabling avoidance that doesn’t serve her, leading to feeding her fear cycle. She’s a very fearful and avoidant kid, and every single day in other contexts we have to be her wise guide, as she says she’s scared of and doesn’t want to do certain things. And we acknowledge and allow the emotion and we go anyway and she loves it. Left to her own devices, she does not approach things. We very kindly and openly do not let her feelings take the wheel and, as a result, she engages with the world. So this is why it feels really wrong to be unable to have her out of pull-ups. It’s so out-of-sync with the highly skilled and capable kid that she is, and it feels like enabling a phobia.
By the way, she’s typically developing, though highly sensitive and strong-willed, demand-avoidant. No transitions of any kind, stable household, etc.
I wrote back, and this is all part of the podcast episode “When Kids Don’t Seem Motivated (to Potty, Crawl, or Create)”. This is already in there, but I’m shortening it a little bit. I wrote back: “Can you tell me the whole story of what letting her lead has looked like up until now?”
And she wrote back:
When she turned two, we noticed signs of what we thought at the time was readiness and a good time to give potty training a try: absolutely hating diaper changes, body awareness, and telling us when she had to go and after she went, she had various potty books that she liked to read, and she would role-play with stuffed animals and talk about it positively. And we tried the full-on (and here she mentions a popular book and potty training method that I’m not going to repeat here). I know now it’s the worst, I would never recommend it again. But she absolutely would have no part in it, was very distressed and physically resisting. So we tried for a number of days to work through the fear, but then gave up. We decided to let go of all the pressure and return at a later time, waiting until she was ready.
Eventually, when it had been a while, I started to very low-pressure mention it again as an option. Like, “Here’s your little potty next to mine. I’m going to pee now and if you want, there’s your potty” type of thing. Throughout the next year it definitely came up, just because it does. Also, she’s a Velcro kid and she almost always follows me into the bathroom, which I’m totally fine with. So throughout the next year, we would sometimes talk about it directly, like if she would bring up other kids she knows using the potty or she initiates her own independent role-playing potty with her stuffed animals quite often. But we never said she has to or should or anything like that.
We did try many times to understand what she’s scared of and doesn’t like about it, but she can’t articulate it. I think she genuinely doesn’t know. At first, because of that dang book, we probably initially weren’t, but later we did really come to a fully-accepting attitude toward her readiness and leaving it up to her. And I swear we have really, truly conveyed that for over a year.
But then after a year, no budging or interest on her part, she turned three, and doubt started to creep up again, wondering if it was really right that we should wait for her to tell us she’s ready. This is never going to happen. Our pediatrician and a child therapist said we should try again, with the rationale that she’s three now and to just tell her, This is what we’re doing now, and we know she can do it.
So we did that. We told her it was time for underwear and she willingly picked out a potty and underwear and put it on herself and everything. But then as soon as the first sensations of having to pee started, she started to get super anxious and hide and freak out and say she didn’t want to use the potty. I was supportive of her anxiety, showed her where the potty was, but did no physical bringing her there or even telling her she needed to. But she refused and went in her pants. This went on for two days and this time we didn’t care, but we were just really afraid if we dropped it, we would be telling her she isn’t capable and can’t accomplish something new. But we had to, because the physical withholding and fear was just being exacerbated. So we told her, nevermind, back to pull-ups. Told her we know she could do it if she wanted to, but that we see she isn’t doing it. You do it when you’re ready.
It’s been six months since then. Same thing. Dropped it, but it still comes up because it’s all around us, especially now that all her same-age friends are potty trained. And she still initiates play around it, I find stuffed animals on my toilet every day. I will occasionally say things like, Whenever you’re ready, we can figure out how to make this fun, not scary, etc. type thing, or try to casually talk to her about how she feels about it. But she hits a wall, and so I back off. So anytime the topic comes up naturally, she makes a point of saying she’s never using the potty.
I guess I should mention my husband. He’s basically been on board with all this along the way, so we’ve been aligned. I am the initiator of parenting problem solving and, if anything, he conveys less pressure and interest in the whole potty thing because he’s not the anxious overthinker that I am.
So in the episode that I’m talking about, about motivation, I offered some feedback to this parent, which I’m going to describe to you. But before I do that, I want to share the whole reason I’m doing this episode, which is that she gave me an update. I always love updates. Usually they’re really encouraging, but in this case, it was doubly interesting to me because this parent let me know that the advice I’d given her actually turned out to be the wrong advice.
She wrote:
Hi, Janet-
I thought I would circle back and give you an update, since you included this in your episode. I tried my best to implement your suggestions. Still, there was no movement toward interest in the potty on her part, despite all her same-aged friends doing it. No loosening of resistance, not even an inch.
As she approached her fourth birthday (this was just a couple weeks ago), we decided that even though she was not interested whatsoever in taking the steps to get out of diapers, four would be the limit. I was unwilling to have a four-year-old without developmental disabilities in diapers, and so there was simply going to be no choice anymore.
The first couple days were grueling. Her fear and resistance was intense, and we had to push really hard through that. It felt hopeless at first, but then we broke through. Long story short, she hasn’t had an accident in a week and she willingly uses the toilet now and it’s not a problem.
I don’t quite know what to make of this all, and I’m curious about your interpretation. I honestly feel regretful that I didn’t listen to myself as I look back at my previous email and push it earlier. What I saw was a scared kid who needed help doing something she was fully capable of. She was stuck and needed us to see through that. Through my observations, I honestly believe she could have gotten to age six and never initiated this. Through my experience, I don’t actually see pottying as a developmental milestone that kids inherently do when they’re ready. Or I should say: for a lot of other kids, yes, this is the case; for my kid, I don’t think so. I think it was a phobia that she wasn’t ever going to overcome without help, aka a strong and firm push. More like going to the doctor to get vaccines than like walking.
I know what worked. It was us having a hundred percent certainty that it was time despite no interest on her part and that she could do it, but we needed to force the issue. This time we were confident. She didn’t agree to the plan, but I see that she’s now proud of herself. She’s acting her age in a lot of other ways too. She needed this.
Okay, sorry for the essay. For what it’s worth, my husband thinks we waited until the right time. If you ever have a spare moment, I would be very interested in what you make of this experience!!! Thank you.
I wrote back:
I’m thrilled for you and your daughter that you got this result. I imagine you’re greatly relieved, and I’m sincerely sorry if my advice led you astray and away from your instincts. I do have an interpretation and I’m wondering if you wouldn’t mind again if I shared my thoughts in a podcast.
Of course I couldn’t remember all the advice I had given in that original podcast, so I’m just going to share some of it with you now. And then talk about what I make of all this and why I’m calling this episode “The Bad Advice I Gave About Toilet Training.”
Here’s the feedback I gave her in the podcast episode:
I would love to help this parent. There’s not necessarily one simple answer here, but I can offer perspective and some thoughts as to her child’s point of view on this. It would seem like, speaking of motivation, that this little girl isn’t motivated to go on the potty. But as I’ve said, I believe that all children are motivated to develop and to move forward. So here are some of the things I would look at.
For one, when she says “my three-and-a-half-year-old is absolutely set on being in diapers ‘forever,’” “she will not so much as get near a potty and don’t even think about talking about it.” She’s showing signs of big resistance. Children don’t say things like, “I’m going to be in diapers forever” unless they’re making a point, they’re pushing back on an agenda that they feel from the parent. Now, this parent’s being so careful not to impose her agenda, to be sensitive, to be trusting. This little girl, like all children, they’re reading their parent’s thoughts all the time. And one thing that gets children caught up is when there’s some kind of mixed messaging.
I think that’s one of the main things going on here is this girl is getting all these mixed messages. They want me to. Now they’re trusting me, but I remember that they still wanted me to. And it’s really hard to kind of erase that without going super far the other direction, where we’re not just trying to trust, but we really feel certain in our hearts that our child is not going to be going to college in diapers. That they really, really have what it takes.
And in this case, this parent sees how confident she is, but what gets in the way? The anxiety, the fear. A lot of that comes from the mixed messaging. Because when we’re feeling mixed, it’s very uncomfortable for our children. It’s like they have nothing to hold onto. What is it? Does my parent want me to go on the potty or are they really waiting for me to do it?
The main advice I have for this parent is to make a clear choice one way or the other. My recommendation would be to go the full-on trust direction. And really full-on, because the fact that this little girl has friends that are going on the potty now, it’s not going to be hard for her to do that. But we have to take ourselves out of the picture, I believe. So that’s the direction I would go.
But even if this parent’s going to try to make this happen, to be really clear in herself. To be through and through with what she’s deciding, and know she’s being a great parent in her choice either way. That, I believe, is getting in the way, the mixed messaging. And the parent, as she admits at the end, having her own anxiety. So when her child is anxious, it makes her feel anxious probably. I mean, it makes all of us feel anxious when our kids are anxious or upset or scared. But that is filtering in here.
And she says, “I’m honestly doubtful that, left to her own devices, she will ever get to the point of feeling ready.” But why not? There’s no flaw in this girl. This girl has what it takes to develop this, and every developmentally appropriate skill, in her time. So these doubts, where are they coming from? Are they doubts in ourselves or are they really doubts in our child? Often it comes from doubts in ourselves. So trust is a big, key point here.
She says, “She’s a fearful and avoidant kid, and every single day in other contexts, we have to be her wise guide,” as she said she’s scared of and doesn’t want to do things. So they’re handling this part very well. They’re not accommodating her fears. They acknowledge, they allow the emotion, and they go anyway. The big difference in the way that we want to handle going on the potty is that we can’t make a boundary like that. We can’t force a child to do that, just as we can’t force a child to crawl or to draw. So navigating this has to be more subtle and delicate.
This parent says she has a fully accepting attitude toward her readiness after the approach from the book didn’t work and leaving it up to her. She says, “I swear we have really, truly conveyed that.” Well, conveying that is great. More important even is that she feels it, and then she doesn’t have to try to convey it. But it’s really through and through, she’s actually feeling it. And maybe she was, but it seems like it’s kind of dependent on a certain timeline when she’s trusting. And I would encourage her to really believe in her child all the way, if possible. And I know that’s hard. The fact that she says the girl is playing it out with the animals and all that, it’s a brilliant sign. That’s her working through her anxieties or her reticence or her fears, whatever that is, that’s the most brilliant thing she could do. So I recommend trusting that instead of seeing it as a sign that this parent now has to pick up on.
Her daughter doesn’t need any more reminders, in my opinion, that the parent’s going to try to help and make it happen. So I would quit the reminders. I would really trust. I would enjoy seeing her process as she plays with the stuffed animals. She’s got a process that she’s motivated in. Trust that process. She’s showing you that she’s on her way, in her time. So really I would let her have this. Because this parent says, “Anytime this topic comes up naturally, she makes a point of saying she’s never using the potty.” So even when it comes up naturally, let it sit with her. Let her be the one to say more about it. Try to not take the bait, to pick up on it. Just let it lie where it is. She will come to this. Her friends will help her, and her natural ability will help her.
There’s one other thing that I feel like is key that I wanted to speak to here. The parent went through where she was trusting, and then she said she “started to very low pressure mention it again as an option.” So we already showed our cards that we wanted her to do it, back in the beginning, and that kind of eliminates our ability to just casually bring it up again without it pushing a button in our child and revealing that we really haven’t let go. So what can seem very casual to us on an adult level, they’re picking up on all the subtext, all the feelings, all that other stuff. We really have to be clear, unfortunately. I know, it’s a bummer.
But the thing I wanted to point out is that she says, “Throughout the next year it definitely came up, just because it does. Also, she’s a Velcro kid and she almost always follows me into the bathroom, which I’m totally fine with.” In my other posts and podcast episodes about potty learning, I mention that one of the things that can get in the way is if it’s hard for us to set boundaries with our child. Because the reason it’s usually hard for us to set boundaries with our child is because we don’t like to see them upset or seem anxious or seem scared or seem anything uncomfortable. That is the main reason it’s hard for a lot of us to set boundaries. And I’m raising my hand here! So when we say we have a Velcro child, we’re saying that she’s more needy, needs to be physically close with her parent at all times. And sometimes this is even kind of a control thing that children do. I mean, I’m not talking about consciously they’re trying to control their parent, but it actually usually comes from a strength more than a weakness. In my experience working with children and my own children, it comes from, I don’t want to let you go easily. I’m going to make a big fuss.
And this parent said she doesn’t mind at all having her come into the bathroom. But I would look at that because usually, and maybe the parent going to the bathroom isn’t a good example, but if we’re describing our child as a “Velcro child,” that’s usually a sign that we’re not comfortable setting certain boundaries in any way, and it often gives children that mixed messaging I was talking about. In this case, the parent said she doesn’t care, but for most of us it’s like, Well, I’d actually rather go to the bathroom by myself, but I feel bad, so I’m going to have her come with me. And that feeling of navigating these mixed messages in a parent, as I said before, is really, really uncomfortable for a child. It can keep them stuck, it can keep them in that anxious place of the parent not being able to really let go of them all the way and really let them have their feelings about certain things. And therefore they’re kind of left in a state of uncertainty and anxiety.
This is me offering a perspective, again, that may not exactly match what this parent is feeling or what’s going on here, but I just want to offer it.
What I would suggest is this parent starts to be really clear about her boundaries and herself with her daughter when it comes to separation. In the beautiful, clear way that she said she’s handling the outings with her daughter that her daughter’s reticent to go on. And so instead of thinking of her as a Velcro child, she thinks of her as a child who really has a lot of feelings about letting go of her parent and that she needs to express more feelings about that because she has a lot more and stronger feelings about it. When she can feel that clarity in her ability to have her feelings and move through them in her way, for her to come to all of this on her own, because the parent has actually given this to her, free and clear. Again, it’s that total trust that’s down to our bones, that we have to feel, that belief in her. Not, Okay, I’m going to trust her, but if this doesn’t work for a certain time, then maybe I’m going to wonder again. And also that clarity around boundaries.
I would give her both of those, and that belief in her. Belief in her to be upset about the parent going to the bathroom alone or whatever it is, and wanting to be Velcro but we’re not going to let her be Velcro because we have our own needs. And it’s more important to be honest and allow her to express her feelings.
So that’s how I responded to her in the podcast episode. And then she wrote me this note about her success that I’m genuinely thrilled about. And what it made me realize, the learning I got from this is that even though I predicated all of this by saying the main advice I have for this parent is to make a clear choice one way or the other, I feel bad that then I recommended her to trust her child. Because, as I said in the beginning of this episode today, I believe that’s preferable if we can do it. I believe it gives our child this tremendous opportunity to have one of the first big autonomous achievements in their development. And as this parent reflected on in her update to me, I do see this as akin to walking rather than akin to needing a parent to set a boundary. Because I’ve seen how it happens, it can happen this way.
However, this was not good advice for this parent because it was suggesting that she stretch to a belief system that she absolutely was not in. When I look back at all of this, I can see how she would keep trying to let it go, but she still had doubts. Even though she was sure that she was conveying this to her daughter for a certain amount of time, what we are aiming to convey and what our child is picking up on can be two different things. As I shared with this parent about the mixed messaging, that’s what children feel when we are conveying something that we don’t believe in our gut.
As this parent said in her update, she’s regretful that she didn’t listen to herself. So the part she says she regrets she wasn’t listening to was the part saying that her daughter could not do this, that she had a phobia and that she needed her parent to make this happen. And I’m not doubting that. My only question is how the phobia developed because, as we all know, children catch our feelings. And when this parent described herself as an anxious overthinker, there’s nothing wrong with that, but what we want to know is that that’s getting transmitted to our child all the time, around everything. So it’s going to tend to create anxiety in her, and then her anxiety reflects back on ours, and we go back and forth like that. And it builds and it shows up in all these places that we’re anxious about, that we’re feeling like, Oh gosh, I’ve got to do something and I’m not doing it or I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing with this book, this isn’t the right thing. All that self-questioning that’s so much a part of parenting, but if we have a more anxious temperament we’re going to feel that a lot more intensely and that’s going to come off to our child.
So the reason I believe I gave her the wrong advice, I gave her unhelpful advice clearly, is that even though I said all I believed was that she should go fully either way and believe in it fully, which is what she eventually did, I was really kind of promoting that she should go the trust direction. And when I look back on all of this, that didn’t fit what this parent actually was feeling at all, and there was no way she was going to make this giant shift into that. The only thing that could make her shift it is if her child just suddenly out of the blue, even with all the mixed messaging and the different tries and different messages she was getting from her parent, if she out of the blue went and did it, then that parent might be convinced, right? But otherwise, there was no way she was going to be. And I can’t promise that her daughter would’ve done it.
Although I see that even in this last note to me, this update, she says, “I tried my best to implement your suggestions. Still, there was no movement toward interest in the potty on her part, despite all her same-age friends doing it. No loosening of resistance, not even an inch.” And so that part, that loosening of resistance, there can’t be resistance unless there’s something to resist. And that’s where I think even this parent realizes she was still maybe very subtly pushing this. Because if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t describe what her child was doing as resistance. We can’t resist unless there’s something to resist. So this parent wasn’t in a place where she could really believe this was going to happen. She says other kids maybe, but for her kid, she doesn’t think so. That this was a phobia she was never going to be able to overcome without help.
It’s really hard for me and I can’t, of course, say with complete conviction that I know how to untangle this web of feelings that go back and forth between a parent and a child. We all have them with our children, no matter what. And it’s always interesting for me to try to do that, but I can only guess.
I just have this complete belief in children, so I know that I’m coming from a different place than this parent’s coming from. And that’s okay. All I care about is that she got the results that she wanted. Her daughter’s obviously doing great. She sees her daughter feels good and feels proud of herself. So this is a win. I just wish that I had really considered more where this parent was coming from. It’s her daughter, she knows her better than I do.
And this sort of reminds me of really what any parenting advice is about, where it works and doesn’t work, and when it’s good for us and isn’t good for us. Whatever parenting advice you’re getting from anywhere, it’s got to resonate with your instincts. It may not have been your first instinct. A lot of times it isn’t for any of us, right? I mean, that’s how I felt about this whole approach I teach. When I was first learning it, I wasn’t doing a lot of this. But when I would hear about it, even before I could see it working in my child, it made sense to me, it felt right to me. And if parenting advice from anybody about any aspect of parenting doesn’t feel like that to us, it’s never going to work because it’s not right for us.
So while oftentimes we have reflexive responses to things and we can call that instinct, and maybe some of it needs work or whatever, ultimately it’s still about our instincts. Yes, research and studies and experts and psychologists can share views with us that we didn’t have before. But if those don’t feel right, don’t listen. It’s going to be like we’re trying at something rather than really embracing it, and that doesn’t feel good to us and won’t transmit well to our child. And it can create this kind of mixed messaging. It’s like when people tell us words to say and it’s not the way we actually talk. It may look better in theory, but that’s why I don’t like to give a lot of word examples. Because it’s got to come from us and it’s got to be a part of us, and it’s only going to be any of that if it jives with our instincts. That’s why I was interested in responding to this parent for this episode. I wanted to assure her that she was right to trust her instincts.
And it also reminded me of this idea of parenting we sometimes get, the impression that it’s competitive. That we don’t like the way you’re doing it, you don’t like the way we’re doing it. Well, how can it be when it’s only about our individual instincts? And all these big media sources have been doing pieces on how awful gentle parenting is and all that, but why is that even a thing? It’s only unhelpful if it’s unhelpful to you. If the way that you’re parenting your child is resonating with you and feels right, how dare somebody else judge that and make fun of that? Anyway, that’s this little soapbox, but I don’t understand, I just don’t understand. Everybody gets to do them as parents. They really do. And that’s the only kind of parenting that’s ever going to work, is if we’re doing us because we believe in something. And yes, we get advice and it feels right.
So that’s how I let this parent down. Again, I’m thrilled that she is relieved and got the success and that her daughter, I’m sure, is relieved as well.
So yes, take advice, but if it doesn’t settle in with you, it’s not the right advice. Our children want us to listen to ourselves, because that’s who they’re listening to, so we’ve got to be through and through. As this parent said at the very end of her update to me, “I know what worked. It was us having a hundred percent certainty.”
I hope some of this helps. Thanks so much for listening. We can do this.
