Your Kid’s Motivation Just Went Down The Toilet

It’s a moment celebrated by families everywhere. The roar of the flush is the only thing that can drown out the boisterous jubilation of liberated parents. Your toddler is now potty trained. While basking in this cooperative accomplishment with your child, did you remember to take note of how this happened? You should, you’ll need it later.

Potty training is perhaps the first real challenge for a parent and child where you need to actually coach and motivate your child to learn something. This is the first real exercise where you need them to “buy into it” in order for it to be successful. Prior to this, most parenting has been somewhat reactive as in, “NO!” If you’re one of those “enlightened” parents, you might argue that you started this much earlier, teaching them to read with flash cards. You’re baby didn’t want to read, they just enjoyed the time and attention you gave them as you held up funny looking signs in front of their face. For potty training to work, you have to actually get them to give a crap.

A quick search of the internet under potty training will return over three million results. The most common advice given is that you need to wait until your child is ready before introducing them to potty training. Unfortunately, the most important advice does not show up as frequently, and that is you need to wait until YOU are ready. This is not just a process to potty train your child, this is a process in which you need to find out how they are wired mentally. You need to focus on finding what it is that makes your toddler want to use the potty, or in other cases, the mental obstacle that prevents them from using it. To do this, you need to be persistent, observant, adaptable and most of all, patient.

For our first potty training attempt we tried positive rewards, books and explaining the benefits and consequences of using and not using the potty and got nowhere with our son. “I want to wear a pull-up!” he would declare. Why? Through this process we came to understand that he’s a perfectionist, adverse to failure and is motivated to avoid negative consequences. The pull-ups were his safety net to avoid an accident and failing, but they didn’t provide enough negative consequence to motivate him to start using the potty. We took away the pull-ups. Every time he had an accident, we addressed the fear of failure by complimenting him and saying that was part of learning how to use the potty. He was completely potty trained within days. My other son was different. He’s fiercely independent and does everything his own way on his terms. He needed a different approach. Every time we changed a soiled pull-up we took the time to remind him that if he uses the potty, he can just do this all by himself and doesn’t have to rely on Mommy or Daddy to do it. Within a short period of time, his choosing by the way, he was no longer dependent on Mommy and Daddy to change his pull-up. He also discovered he didn’t need to be dependent on opening doors, walking through the house and using the potty as he just pees on the side of the house when he’s playing outside.

Now, before you email me a link to potty training in less than a day and tell me I am overcomplicating this, I will tell you that the same motivation that pushed them over the hump and into the toilet is the same thing that has helped them learn to ride a bike, try a new sport, perform in a school play, learn to swim and even climb a rock wall. Pay attention to what goes in the toilet and help your kids grow.

Be That Dad!