When children are about two years old, parents often start to worry about one thing - how to train my child to go to the toilet? Sometimes parents will find that after buying all the toys, stickers, potties, and potty training pants, the children are unwilling to start. They will play with their excrement, need to be coaxed to sit on the potty for a while, scream when sitting on the potty, and then excrete immediately after leaving.
Does your child always resist? Although each child has a different personality, there are indeed common ways to make the transition from diapers to potties smoother. This requires you to patiently build a bridge of sufficient communication, reduce the child's resistance, and make the process no longer full of pain.
1. Provide motivation
For children, going to the toilet on the potty is unnecessary, they could have used their own diapers. In many cases, children will think "the potty is so troublesome, I might as well use diapers!" Some children simply have no concept of excretion, and they are extremely curious about their own excrement.
First of all, parents need to try to introduce the concept of defecation to their children. We need to let children know that defecation is a normal way for the body to excrete waste. Their bodies need to excrete waste to avoid poisoning. Poop is not only smelly, but also harmful to our health. Through introduction, children can deal with defecation more objectively and begin to consciously control it.
At the same time, we also need to let children know that not wearing diapers is also a good thing for them. We can gradually guide them to think about the inconveniences of diapers. For example, after defecation, diapers stick to the body wetly, which is very uncomfortable; Parents cannot always change diapers at the first time; Diapers are very hot to wear... and so on.
After making the child aware of the disadvantages of diapers, we can introduce the benefits of potty to him. For example, he can use the potty whenever he wants; Strong and independent children will go to the toilet by themselves; If they can go to the toilet by themselves, their parents will be proud of them... These reasons can encourage children to spontaneously try potty training
2. Reward and punishment mechanism
Although children may be more interested in potty training at the beginning, at the same time, they will feel frustrated if they cannot defecate smoothly in the potty. In this process, in order to prevent the training from becoming a completely negative feedback, parents must intervene and add some encouragement mechanisms.
The first and most important point is that as parents, we need to control our emotions first. No matter what the child does, we must keep our emotions relatively stable. We don’t need to be frustrated after the child accidentally wets his pants, we just need to clean up the scene. We can’t let children suffer from our emotional violence, nor let them feel that they are receiving too much attention, otherwise the child may become overly excited and over-emphasize this process, which will have a side effect on the normal excretion process.
Next is the reward part. When the child successfully defecates in the potty, don't hesitate to encourage him verbally. The most important thing is not to break your promise and use the total reward strategy. If you promise your child that you will give him chocolate as a reward after he succeeds, then don't break it - it is very difficult to rebuild trust. Of course, it is recommended that parents do not use material rewards at the beginning. You should give verbal rewards first. If your child still can't get motivated, then switch to material rewards. You can make a potty training chart for him with the date on it. If the child succeeds, put a small flower on this form. Alternatively, you can buy fidget toys for your child and let him play only when he sits on the potty - but you have to control the time your child sits on the potty.
