Think It Over Thurs: The biology of potty training

Doctor Steve Hodges says that potty training is bogus, so you shouldn’t do it. I am inclined to agree from Dr. Hodges (MD), especially if we are basing this on experience. When our therapy team members and Wood Sprite’s team at the Early Childhood Center both urged us to try rewards, sticker charts and various forms of external motivation to help prompt her to use the potty, we obliged. We were young parents and thought they knew better, but Wood Sprite wouldn’t have it!

Oh, sure, she’d pee to get a Hershey kiss, or a sticker on her Chuck E Cheese chart. But then she’d pee in her pull-up later. No pull-ups? No problem; she would pee in underwear, or even right on the floor. The truth of the matter was that physically and psychologically, she was not ready to go.

Do you know how she started to go potty? By herself. After we’d given up the stupid reward systems we had tried for about a year, a month or two later she just decided to skip her “potty chair” and pee on the toilet like a regular person. In fact, she started to use the toilet for all of her potty needs and never looked back. Sure, she had a couple of nighttime accidents, but overall she just went to the bathroom like a normal human being—which, of course, kids are.

Like so many other things in life, I think that using the bathroom comes naturally when we are ready—not from some kind of training. And when the training does “work,” I don’t think it actually works biologically for the child but for the parents’ convenience.

What do you think about this? Whether you’ve had kids use the potty easily or children struggle well into their primary school years, I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia