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 January 3, 1999 |
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| Giselle Brown (left) and Alexis Bryan play with a potty at a meeting of an East Falls parenting group. (Vicki Valerio / Inquirer Staff Photographer) |
By Lini S. Kadaba
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Kelley Rose Gavel is 3 years and 4 months old, and she's a big girl now.
She can use the potty. Finally.
"When she turned 2, we got a potty chair," said Kelley's mother, Sue Gavel, 35, who lives in Harleysville.
But Kelley wasn't interested -- not for nine months. Gavel said she asked often, but didn't push. One day, Kelley announced she needed to go to the bathroom, and soon after her third birthday, she was wearing Barbie and Winnie-the-Pooh underpants and using the potty, like a big girl.
Once, most children got toilet-trained at 2. But not anymore.
The age is drifting higher. Bigger, older children -- 3-, 4-, even 5-year-olds -- are still wearing diapers. The reasons have as much to do with lifestyle changes as with disposable diapers.
Pampers has a new size 6 diaper that fits boys and girls 35 pounds or larger. We're talking 3- and 4-year-olds. The jumbo diapers are selling like Teletubbies, and grateful parents have clogged Pampers' consumer hotline.
Junior may learn to spell p-o-t-t-y before he learns to use p-o-t-t-y. Grandma's comments aside, that's perfectly fine, say the experts.
"We want to stress it's a process, and it takes time," said Elaine Frank, codirector of Parenting Services for Families and After Adoption, which offers discussion groups for parents.
"It's not that you don't bring it up or try to educate your child, but you don't try to make them do it," added Denise Rowe, also a director of Parenting Services, based in East Falls.
And please don't call the process toilet training. The favored term is toilet teaching or potty learning or even toilet education. We no longer train our children.
"Everybody's trying to figure out a word that sounds better than training," Rowe said. "You train your dog, or you train your cat. But because children have feelings . . . we want to help them, we want to work with the children to learn how to teach themselves to do it."
A child-centered philosophy is only one reason for the trend toward later potty training.
People live harried lives, and mothers, especially working mothers, have little time to hang out in the bathroom with a young child who may or may not be ready to go. So they wait.
When pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton suggested a more relaxed approach toward "bowel and bladder control" in 1962, his research showed that 90 percent of children achieved the milestone between the ages of 2 and 2
years. (About that time, Pampers introduced disposables, which are more comfortable than cloth diapers, providing toddlers less incentive to get out of them.) In 1997, barely one-fifth of children could claim the same achievement by that age, and most -- 75 percent -- were accomplishing the task between 2
and 4 years of age.
"There is no reason to rush it," said Jeffrey Bomze, who practices pediatric and adolescent medicine in Bryn Mawr. "This is a child-centered activity rather than a parent-imposed achievement."
Buy a potty at 18 months, he suggested, but then wait for cues. "We've backed off anything negative or coercive," he said.
The kinder, gentler way puts us at odds with the world. Other cultures routinely toilet train (and yes, they do still train) children at 12 months. The late shift has many a grandmother beside herself. The older generation has its stories, shared without hesitation, of babies trained by a year, sometimes even 10 months.
One grandmother wrote a letter to a parenting expert complaining about her daughter-in-law's "half-hearted" attempt to train 3-year-old twins. "Is this some new parental attitude, or is it just laziness on her part?" she asked.
According to experts, beginning with Brazelton, a child needs to mature physiologically, emotionally, even socially before he or she can successfully use the toilet.
Were babies 30 years ago smarter?
"It wasn't the babies who were trained -- it was their mothers," write the authors of the popular parenting series What to Expect. The mother learned the baby's schedule and caught him at the right times.
With the focus on the child's point of view, we want to make sure the tyke really understands that constant parental refrain: Do you need to go to the potty?
Pediatricians say the magic age to start teaching is a little over 2 years. But even if parents begin the process then, they should expect it to take several months -- or longer -- with frequent relapses.
"You can't force at that age," said Bomze. Toddlers in the middle of the terrible twos often greet any parental request with a firm no, which can make toilet training grounds for World War III and reason enough to wait until the cooperative threes arrive.
"You're not going to win that [ battle ] ," Bomze said. Power struggles can lead to a child's refusing to go at all, and that can cause constipation and serious medical problems.
One Mount Airy mother dutifully bought the potty at 2, and then she played the waiting game. The boy was 3
when he learned to urinate in the toilet. Now 4, he uses pull-ups -- disposable, diaperlike underpants -- for his bowel movements.
For some children, toilet learning can take longer, especially for boys, who apparently lack the fastidiousness of girls.
Still, parents worry -- and society, from grandparents to acquaintances, can add to the stress with insensitive comments.
"It became a power struggle," said the mother, who didn't want her name used. (More older children may still need diapers, but no one brags about the fact.)
As her son got older, she began pushing him. It led to conflicts and setbacks. "That's why you don't push," said the mother, who has overcome guilt and anger. "It's his choice now. . . . I'm backing off."
A go-slowly attitude doesn't guarantee an easier time.
Kelley Gavel suffered constipation, despite her mother's patience. "She was scared," said her mother.
Preschoolers often fear bowel movements -- as if they're losing a piece of themselves.
To help Kelley along, Gavel consulted Bomze, the child's pediatrician; rented the video Once Upon a Potty; and read Everybody Poops, a book for children.
"I think she needed to figure her body out," the mother said.
At the East Falls parenting group, Alexis Bryan, 14 months, sat -- with her clothes -- on a potty put out for exploration. Another toddler, Michael Reed-Price, 17 months, ran over. Soon, the two had taken the potty apart.
The mothers applauded and spoke words of great encouragement, not expectations.
"What age do you get a potty?" asked Alexis' mother, Ivy Bryan, 45. "What's the next step?"
Elaine Frank, the group's coleader, suggested that Bryan encourage -- but never force -- Alexis to sit on the potty, even invite her to watch Mommy use the bathroom.
"This is the education part," said Denise Rowe, the other group leader.
"You constantly want to give the child the idea she has control," Frank added.
With that, Michael grabbed the potty bowl, walked over to the play kitchen in one corner, and used the potty -- to cook.
No matter. The relaxed grown-ups cheered all the same.
