What age should children be fully potty trained? This veteran preschool teacher may surprise you when you hear the answer!
If you’ve done any research on putting your child into preschool, you may have noticed that many preschools require a child to be potty trained.
Sometimes I wonder if I live in the preschool potty training Mecca or if it’s like this everywhere else. Anywhere I go with little ones around, people are talking about the potty!
It’s all over facebook, the hot conversation in mommy groups, and it seems that almost everyone wants to know how to get their toddler to do it as soon as possible.
I hear about more and more parents with a three-year-old (or just under this) who are desperate to get their child potty trained.
Sometimes they jump on it when their child is even just a year old. Some will go through 10 sets of underwear a day and endure the sound of a timer ringing every 15 minutes.
Should your child be potty trained by three-years-old?
Everyone who is frantic and concerned needs to just take a breath and soak this up: turning three years old is not a rite of passage into potty training magic!
Perhaps that’s confusing though. We hear that most children are potty trained by two, and now here I am saying that it’s OK if they are not potty trained by three-years-old.
I hear grandparents talking about potty training their kids by some crazy age like nine months old. I just can’t even picture what it would be like to have a child who may not even walk but is proficiently using the potty.
It ranks right up there with potty training your cat! They both sound pretty awesome, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
I am a veteran preschool teacher, and for years I thought I knew when children needed to be potty trained. But after cleaning up accidents day in and day out, I realized I had it all wrong.
The Truth about Potty Training
The honest truth is that there is no magic age to this potty training madness. I get it — I’ve had to get over the disappointment too. It took me 10 years and copious amounts of time in the bathroom to realize the true complexity of this milestone.
On occasion, I would find a child who I helped master the potty by 20 months. It put me in this fantasyland where I thought I could just sprinkle “magic pixie potty dust” over all these children, and hooray — here is a class of instantaneously potty trained children.
Then after living in pools of urine, I was slammed back to reality, with frustration, grief, and exhaustion. I had to face the true, hard facts.
These children have been alive for two years, and I am expecting all of them to master a complex mental, physical, physiological, and emotional life skill.
Begging might work when we talk to adults, but a toddler will not just learn physical and mental competencies because I keep repeating myself.
They are just putting simple sentences together and learning how to walk up and down the stairs.
Shouldn’t we be playing in sensory bins and enjoying them say “pasketti,” instead of torturing ourselves in a small cell with the white porcelain bowl?
Dr. Steve Hodges, a pediatric urologist and author of It’s No Accident: Breakthrough Solutions To Your Child’s Wetting, Constipation, Utis, And Other Potty Problems says that we are doing more harm than good to children by trying to force them to potty train before they are ready.
In an article for Babble, he says “Children under age 3 should not manage their own toileting habits any more than they should manage th eir college funds. Preschools that require 3-year-olds to be potty trained – like the one in Virginia that suspended 3-year-old Zoe Rosso for excessive potty accidents – are harming kids.”
What Really Works
After I finished mourning my dream of instantly potty trainable children, I accepted a fact that I tried to push out of my mind for a long time.
Children will come to master potty training through time.
Potty training is not a formula where the process takes 180 days and requires 2 hours of sitting each day until their legs go numb.
I am speaking from experience here, or you are welcome to just try this out with your own set of 500 kiddos.
Children learned how to crawl and to walk, and we did not have to coach them. Many of us were relaxed and excited about the process, and we knew our kids would develop these skills when their bodies were ready.
We reached out our arms in support to help them take their first steps instead of dragging them along, and we sure didn’t have to offer them a pony.
They were motivated within themselves to walk, and when they did, we didn’t have to try and explain what a big deal it was. They just knew, and then they wanted to master it and walk everywhere.
What if potty training was a similar type of process? What if we let the child show us toilet learning readiness and went off their lead? What if we just supported them and were there for encouragement?
A child who is ready to be potty trained will be able to hold their bladder for hours and doesn’t need a 15 minute timer. They will learn from modeling, from their peers, and by being encouraged to go to the bathroom when it biologically makes sense (after waking up, after meals, before bedtime, and before leaving the house for our own sanity).
I’ve tossed in the towel on dragging children through the potty training process. It’s not worth it. Not for me. Not for them.
Now we spend our time enjoying one another, and I have extra moments to just savor by watching them learn and grow.
There is no hype, no forcing, and no more urine pools.
Instead, we have more time to focus on the best moments that toddlers and preschoolers can offer, and I don’t miss a single moment of the potty training battles.
In fact, I’ve said goodbye to them forever.
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What a great post. I loved reading it. When I “potty trained” my kids, I waited until they themselves were so ready that it literally took no “training” at all. My little girl, at 27 months, said to me as I was changing her diaper, “Mom, I want to wear underpants.” She hasn’t worn a diaper since, with the exception of naps and night time. My point is, when your little person is ready to use the toilet, they will, and it will take little encouragement from parents and other adults. I often feel that today parents so readily compare their child to others, and that we are constantly in a race to have “advanced” children we push them into things beyond what is traditionally developmentally appropriate. It’s time to sit back and let our children be that, children.
I love it, Sarah! You’re right, when you wait until they are really ready, it’s not training at all! It’s a life skill, not a race. I love the great wisdom you have shared here, and I hope many others will find inspiration and encouragement through it!!
This is a great post! Refreshing to read, and the DVD looks good too – i like that it has signing, I wonder if that one is available in UK
Thank you for the sweet comment, Anna! The DVD is definitely worth every cent/copper! I have put a line in the Signing Time to see if it is available for all of the fabulous readers in the U.K. :).
Love it and agree with every point. We push too much just so our child can go to preschool. Parents (including me) need to relax!
It’s such a pleasure to have you visit, Jaimi! You are so right!! I really think we need to turn off the voices of society and family members or peers and listen to the most important one — that of our child!
I couldn’t love this post any more 😉 I have b/g twins and my son “trained” himself much like Sarah’s daughter- we waited until he was ready and it was a ridiculously smooth process. This happened right after they turned three. We are still practicing patience with my daughter, who has some GI issues and needs some extra TLC. However, I’m confident that it will happen when she’s ready and I am not about to waste time stressing over it! Thanks again for the wonderful post. I’ll be sharing 😉
Thank you so much for sharing about your experience, Stephanie!! I am so sorry that your sweet little one has to endure GI issues. That is so hard!! I love how you aren’t stressing about it and just waiting for her timing. I hope that many others with similar situations will find encouragement in this :).
Great post. My oldest was interested in the potty shortly after turning 2, but only sporadically. I didn’t start really focusing on it until he turned 3 and he was ready so we really only had a few accidents and he was fully using the potty within a week. My second child tried at 3 but really wasn’t ready. We tried again at about 3.5 and it took him a while; lots more time in pull-ups than my oldest, but that was fine with me. He eventually got the hang of it. Who knows what will happen with son #3.
I feel bad for parents who need to have their child in preschool (and their teachers) because I know they feel pressured to have them potty-trained by 3. I don’t think it’s a good situation for anyone, but I can understand the preschools’ rules about it. I am lucky enough to stay at home with my kids and we didn’t start preschool until they were 4.
Every child is different and it’s so important to listen to them and wait until they’re ready.
Thank you so much for sharing your family’s experience, Sarah Parisi! I love to hear how you bypassed accidents. It’s a true sign that your child was ready, and you were a very attentive mother. I am a fan of pull-ups for sure. It’s so great to practice those skills of pulling them up and down before they’re ready for underwear! It’s such a pleasure to have you visit!
I loved to read your post! Both my kids showed me their readiness. Actually, to be more precised, my daughter is 3 years and 8 months and just barely shows me signs of readiness. My son was potty trained at 3 years old and 9 months. When he felt ready. I never pushed and just waited for them to be ready, and there was almost no accidents because my son was ready and motivated. I never felt the urge to sit my kids on the potty for hours. My daughter is on the good path. A few more weeks and I think she will be ready. 🙂
Caroline, that is so beautiful!! I am so glad you shared your own experience. You missed out on a lot of frustration and stress that others go through, and I admire you for watching your children’s abilities so closely. Thank you so much for you wonderful comment and sharing such great encouragement.
I can’t believe today’s mothers! Potty training isn’t about waiting for some bogus signs your children put out. The training involves YOU, the parent. (And if they’re TELLING you they need a diaper change, you are WAY beyond the time they should have been trained!) This is one of those occasions where YOU are going to have to be in charge, NOT your child. You need to take your child OUT of his diaper, put on some lightweight cotton pants and load him up with liquids; you too. Then, set a timer, Every hour, the two of you go to the bathroom TOGETHER. If he never sees the process, how is he going to know what’s expected of him? He should see your husband go as well. If he messes his pants in that time and it runs down his legs, well, he’s just learned something. (And, yes, you will have to clean up after your children, probably until they leave the house for college.) When I trained my kids, and yes, it is “training,” I put a long t-shirt on them and took off their diapers. They had little potty chairs of their own. But, as I had boys, it was also fun for them to “aim” for things in the toilet: bits of toilet paper, even Cheerios. They never made a mess and they were trained in about 2 weeks. It was easier to catch a bowel movement because those were pretty regular. Then, we made a big deal about telling it bye-bye as we flushed it away. I did, however put diapers on them at night the first week as that was a little tougher to time. But, at the end of 2 weeks, even those accidents, while they still happened, were rare. If you plan on putting them in preschool at the age of 3–and yes, I, too, am an educator–then they must be trained, at least around here. And, as a teacher who is constantly busy, do I really want to take time to change a diaper, or to have my aide waste valuable time? All because a parent was too lazy and was “waiting” for their child to tell them they were ready to be trained. You should read John Rosamund. Excellent information on raring children and helping them through these milestones, without the psycho mumbo-jumbo.
Thanks for visiting Old Mom! I love the cheerio idea!! In all honesty, I used to feel the same way that you do. I felt it was my job to intervene and to train.
I didn’t really change my strategy until I started looking at child developmentally from the standpoint that children are natural learners. I never had to teach infants to crawl or to walk. Toddlers don’t need to be taught to talk or to explore. Instead we are facilitators to their innate abilities.
A lot of the comments on this post are from educators and teachers, and we all have different perspectives. I am certainly not forcing anyone to follow my path, but I have learned that it has brought out the best in my own teaching and interactions. In my opinion, life is best with joy and without judgment.
Thanks so much for this. I’m a first time mom with a recently turned three year old who isn’t potty trained yet. I keep getting the comments from other moms asking why I’m having trouble with it and basically putting me down. I don’t want to push him and have been feeling stressed about getting him potty trained by preschool next year and have been feeling like we are behind. This has put me at ease. Thank you 🙂
That makes my night, Jessika! I run across LOTS of moms who feel the same way. Stay strong and keep following your little one’s lead.
I completely agree with you on this! there is no specific age for potty training,so we shouldn’t expect our kids to be trained by a particular age.My own son started training after 3 yrs.
Thanks for this wonderful post. My son is 3 yrs and 1 month, the daycare supervisor don’t want to promote him to pre-pre-kinder, he must stay with the babies between 1.5-3years until he can say that he needs to use the bathroom. He uses the bathroom only if you take him and sometimes he shows signs that needs to go.