‘Yay! Time to potty train. I love potty training’ said no mother ever. But we are the well-trained adults we are today because our mums did it anyway.
Learning to control the bladder and bowels is a significant rite of passage all must embark on. While this journey is universal, the way it is done varies significantly across cultures and throughout time. Potty training today, looks completely different than in earlier centuries where kids today take nearly twice as long to potty train compared to kids fifty years ago. Back then parents would put cloth diapers on their babies to train them as early as possible to reduce their workload.
Today most parents use disposable diapers and the gentle potty-training method. With also more working mothers than ever before, it is not uncommon for a child to remain in diapers until age 3 or later since diapers are affordable and convenient, and potty training takes a considerable amount of time and commitment.
We call it gentle potty training because, in the older days, caregivers went to extremes of putting their children on strict laxative schedules to induce pooping at predictable times. Now, most parents use the approach of regular potty trips to train their children. This could be taking your child to the potty as soon as they wake up in the morning, after meals and before or after naptime. This forms a habit of regular potty trips for the young one.
A lot has changed over time in potty training, from the age of laxatives and cloth diapers to now the ipotty which is a colourful children’s potty fitted with an iPad mount. This is a technique meant to encourage your kid to use the potty while being engaged by the screen in front of them. Even hygiene has evolved with parents finding fun ways to teach their children toilet hygiene for example we now find that most potty-training homes have standing stools that help the kids reach the sinks in the bathroom to encourage the children to wash their hands after using the toilet. When it comes to cleaning the toilet or potty, we have great new products like Atilla that kill germs and bacteria ensuring you and your loved ones remain healthy and germ-free.
And now we have more fun ways of teaching children how to maintain toilet hygiene. Be it through songs or videos. So, to celebrate World Toilet Day and World Children’s Day, let’s embrace the highs and lows of potty training.
