I remember visiting my friend’s home when her daughter was slightly older than 1 year old and seeing that the little girl had her own plastic potty in the bathroom. It turns out that my friend, who grew up in the former Soviet Union in what is now the Ukraine, was following the Russian tradition of early potty training. For today’s hint, the first of a series of hints highlighting money-saving child rearing traditions from different cultures and countries, I asked her to share the approach in a guest post. My hope is that it will help other parents cut down on diaper costs sooner rather than later.
When my daughter turned 1, my mom and my tot’s Russian babysitter raised the question of starting potty training. In fact, they both felt my daughter was already running late.
My mom started potty training me when I was 8 months old and when I started day care at 1 year old, I was already potty trained. Meanwhile, my babysitter started training her two sons at 6 months old and had them fully trained by 1 (by potty trained, I mean, going to the bathroom only when put on the potty).
I wasn’t sure about starting potty training so early. Most of my American friends did it much later, when their children were 2 to 2.5 years old, and I read a number of articles strongly advising about the dangers of early potty training. But you can also find studies taking the other side of the debate, and I did notice that potty training was a nightmare for many of my American friends, possibly because their 2 year olds had become so comfortable peeing and pooping in their diapers. So I decided to try to potty train my daughter when she was slightly older than 1 year old, with the help of her Russian babysitter.
The general technique of Russian early potty training is to put kids, starting at around 6 to 8 months, on their own little potty every 20 to 30 minutes and ask them to pee or poop. Parents can also hold their little ones over the toilet if the kids can’t yet sit. Intervals can vary in length and can be shorter after large meals. If children do go to the bathroom, their success is met with applauses, hugs, and kisses to create a truly rewarding experience for the child.
Another really important component of the technique is to let the little one run diaper-free for a couple of hours or so a day and learn from the accidents. When an accident happens, you gently ask your little one to warn you the next time an accident is about to happen so you can get him or her to the potty in time to avoid it. It’s important to avoid negative reactions to accidents. Usually after six months to one year of this technique, a child is potty trained.
“You need to put children on the potty every 20 to 30 minutes,” says my friend Natalia Gracheva, who has many years of experience working with, and potty training, toddlers. She notes that the systematic approach is very important to early potty training and says, “potty training should be a positive everyday experience. There shouldn’t be any threats after accidents, only praise will bring a positive result.”
My babysitter was always extremely consistent at remembering to put my daughter on the potty at regular intervals, and she coined an easy phrase “ah-ah-ah” for going on a potty. So when we wanted to see whether my daughter needed to go to the bathroom, we all asked her “ah-ah-ah?”
Soon my daughter started warning us that she did want to “ah-ah-ah,” saying the phrase herself when she needed to make a number two. We’d bring her over to her potty* and if her “ah-ah-ah” signal turned to be a real one, we all jumped for joy, hugging her and applauding to make her feel like a hero. If the signal was a false one, and that happened a lot too, we were not discouraged. We continued to react to any other “ah-ah-ah” signals and patiently waited for the successes.
For the diaper-free time, I chose areas of the house, such as our kitchen and backyard, where I could easily take care of the consequences. My daughter and I laughed and cried through many accidents. When an accident happened, I gently asked her to warn me next time, and she would sometimes cry as she seemed to be really upset with herself. It did seem that she felt like a real hero when she actually made it into the bathroom on time. After the first month of training, my daughter frequently initiated clapping herself after she peed or pooped and encouraged everybody around to do the same. She seemed to enjoy the whole experience.
Once my daughter started a Russian daycare when she was 2, our efforts were supported by a systematic approach at the daycare. The teachers there reminded kids about potties every 20 to 30 minutes and allowed the kids to run diaper free in the afternoon if they did go to the bathroom earlier. If accidents happened, the diaper-free privileges were suspended for a day or two, but then resumed (the kids really seemed to like being diaper-free). “Group activities, for example potty training experiences at day care, really help as kids as they learn from each other,” my friend, the potty training expert, says.
This technique definitely wasn’t a painful experience for us. To be sure, different strategies work for different kids. If my daughter hadn’t reacted positively to the whole potty training experience, I don’t think I would have put pressure on her to continue for so long.
After a year of this process, my daughter was fully trained by shortly after her second birthday. She was able to walk to the potty herself and do her business, with very few accidents.
*An additional potty training hint: We bought our daughter a Summer Infant potty that resembled an adult toilet and wasn’t too fancy, as kids love imitating adults.
What are your tips for early potty training? What are your favorite money-saving childrearing tips from different cultures and countries?
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You must have a lot of patience to stick with this for a year — much more patience than I could muster. I spent the last month of my maternity leave potty-training my 2-year-old son. It took him a few weeks before he was finally accident free, but we did it and I’m very proud of both of us. But he still wears diapers for naps and bedtime and, unfortunately, uses these occasions to go #2. Despite successfully doing so his first week of potty training, he now refuses to do #2 in the potty and I’m not sure what to do. Any advice would be appreciated!
Here were my personal experiences with potty training, one at 25 months and one at 19 months.
http://gooseling.com/2013/08/25/potty-training/
Our toddler has been telling us “poo-poo” since he was 14 months old. The problem is he just wants to sit on the potty, pretend to push, wipe, and flush, then wait to actually poop as soon as the diaper goes back on 🙁 I know he’s ready to be completely diaper free. I just need to commit to letting him go diaper free for a few days!
With my first daughter we often let her go diaper free due to our lovely climate. At 10 months she started going to the same spot ( under the cat tree) to go potty almost every time. She seemed to like the semi privacy. We bought her a little potty and started letting her go first thing every morning, and then placed it under the kitty tree. Throughout the day she would use the potty and we would clap and cheer. She was completely potty trained in the day time and out and anout by right after her first birthday. I started taking her once at night ( we co-sleep) when she woke up to nurse , and by 14 months she was fully trained at night as well…we didn’t buy a single diaper after that and she is four now. With our second daughter we started brining her to a little potty at about 5 months. Within a couple weeks she made all her solids on the little potty seat ( on the big toilet) unless we were out of the house for hours. By 11 months she was able to signal to go to the little potty about 90% of the time. By 15 months she was out of diapers ( cloth) both day and night with one nighttime potty run. Needless to say, American standards of what is and isn’t natural or age appropriate are usually pretty far off the biological mark. The rest of the world routinely has children out of diapers of any kind long before 2 yrs, and so did American parents pre 1960s. Many don’t realize their own parents and grandparents were potty trained around a year old, yet the cultural myth that it is impossible or unhealthy before 3 persists. Where I live the advice given is to not even bring up pottying until the summer after a child turns 3, then to try for 1 week. If unduccessful, wait 4-6 months and try again. Wonder why the majority of 4 year olds are still in diapers ( pull ups)……
I think the American standard has more to do with kids in care….and disposable diapers. My mom says she started potty training us at 5 or 6 months. But there are two important factors. 1) When you’re having wash diapers everyday you’re much more motivated..and 2) She did not work outside of the home and when she did there was another family member as a sitter. This is a lot different when your child is in a daycare setting with 4 or 5 other little ones. So, to remove the confusions of diapers (I can go on myself) vs panties (oh no!)
But I will say I’m always amazed at how I hear people tell they are potty trained but not accident free until 2 or 3. It seems like no matter when you start the process that seems to be the magic age.
With that said, I started my strong-willed daughter at 1 year…and at 18 months we are still working through it. She knows what to do…most of the time there is an accident she chooses to do something different. lol.. But it is not a big deal for us. We’ll get there as we can…btw she’s in daycare but they are really good at keeping her on a schedule–when they can.
It’s tough…no judgment here. I don’t think in the end it impacts their lot in life all that much…as long as they get it down before they are in the board room!
36 months is the average age at which American kids are finished potty training now. That means half. 70 years ago the average age for finishing was 18 months. There’s nothing magical about 2-3 years, is just the average for our culture at this time. My niece started training at 3 years and wasn’t accident free until 6 years. It just takes time for a child to fully learn the skill, like any other skill. Any kid, regardless of age, needs time to learn something new. It doesn’t happen overnight even if you wait a long time.
I did a similar thing with my daughter, starting at 6 months. She had just started eating solid foods with gusto and her poops firmed up. She hated the feeling of them in her diaper. Instead of encouraging her to tolerate them, it just made sense to me to encourage her to put them in the potty instead. She caught on very quickly. I used the book “Diaper Free Before 3” to help me.
My son developed an association with one particular diaper cover from about 2 months. Every time i use it he ALWAYS goes poop in it. He also stopped peeing when i changed him, and i believe that i could have taught him to pee in a potty on command. But he’s had a lot of feeding problems so i haven’t tackled potty training yet. I do anticipate starting sometime before 18 months though, which is when this method is best.
There have hardly been any studies done on infant potty training. However, one retrospective study suggests that starting training after 18 months increases incontinence problems throughout childhood.