Parenting Australia

Toilet Training Woes

As last summer approached we decided it was the time to toilet train Noah. He was two and a half then and knowing I was giving birth to our second child in early 2009, it seemed the optimum time to tackle toilet training head on and get rid of Noah’s nappies before we started on newborn nappies again.

So here we are 10 months later still trying to toilet train Noah. There have been a number of issues that have made this task difficult:

• Noah spends a day each with his grandparents (my parents)
• Noah had two days at day care each week

Johanna Baker-Dowdell
• Noah is very routine orientated and each place used a slightly different variation on the training routine I suggested
• Noah is a day dreamer and gets caught up in what he is doing
• Harvey is now the primary carer so someone new is taking him to the toilet.

We started with a potty and Noah found it uncomfortable so we switched to a seat that fitted on top of our toilet and a step. He was much more comfortable with this so we stuck with it. When he went to his grandparents I sent the seat with him but my mother chose not to use it and my father and his partner had their own seat they wanted to use for him. Day care has a room full of tiny pint-sized toilets that Noah seemed happy enough to use so we didn’t push the issue there.

Even now he will only occasionally tell us if he needs to do a wee and then we’ll rush off the toilet. Most of time we tell him when he is going and he’ll argue, saying he doesn’t need to do a wee, but lo and behold when he sits on the toilet he discovers he does need to go after all. This is manageable because I can see he will tell us he needs to go more and more, and eventually he will just take himself to the toilet. We don’t often have many accidents with wee any more. If we do it is because he is off in his own little world, or he is really mad at one of us and wets himself to show us just how much!

Our biggest sticking point is training Noah to do a poo in the toilet. He will occasionally do a poo in his underpants when he is concentrating on an activity, but mostly he holds on to the poo all day and then within five minutes of putting his night nappy on he will have done it. He thinks it’s funny and now yells out from his bedroom that he has done a poo. Sometimes he’ll even get the nappy ready for us to change him!

So after months of this I decided to call in an expert for advice. I spoke to Margaret Saunders from Bedtime and Toilet Training Solutions and she gave me some great tips for training Noah:

• Try the ‘Would you/Let’s do’ approach: “Would you go to the toilet. Let’s do that now.” Touch him on the shoulder and walk with him and he is on his way to the toilet before he realises. He has no choice but to do it.


• Teach him to teach: he can learn by teaching a doll/teddy to go to the toilet. Teach him every step: how to pull his pants down to go to the toilet etc. and then get him to teach the doll/teddy each step. Give him verbal rewards to reinforce the message.


• Rather than talking about going to the toilet, talk about keeping his pants dry. Noah has Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder pants so every morning we say he needs to keep Thomas or Bob dry because they wouldn’t be able to work any more if they get wet and rust.


• Instead of making him do a poo in the toilet, get him to do his poo in his underpants or nappy in the bathroom, standing next to the toilet, for three days running, then get him to do it in his nappy on the toilet for three days, then put a hole in the nappy so he feels the poo drop for three days etc.

These aren’t all of Margaret’s expert tips, but you can find out more on her website www.BedtimeandToiletTrainingSolutions.com.au. Margaret said there was more chance if success if the child to be toilet trained had reached the following milestones: they can talk, pull clothes up (ie half dress themselves from the bottom down) and follow instructions. Other signs they are ready is if their nappies have lots of fluid and then are dry and if they show an interest in using the toilet.

“Toilet training is never the same for everybody,” Margaret told me, adding, “The best advice I ever heard was: ‘By the time they go to school they have got their teeth, they can talk and they can go to the toilet’.”

She also explained that boys usually take longer to toilet train than girls. “Girls seem to do it earlier. Boys get very focused and the way they position their bodies makes it easier for an accident to happen. Girls think let’s do it and get on with the day, but boys think they have to take time out from what they’re doing,” Margaret said.

We’re still toilet training Noah, but these tips have definitely made us get towards the end goal faster than anything else has over the past 10 months!

What tips have you used to toilet train your child/ren? Share your tips with our other readers in the comment box below.

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Johanna Baker-Dowdell is mum to two boys – Noah and Ethan – and combines looking after them with her work as a blogger, journalist, writer and public relations consultant. She owns and manages Strawberry Communications which started small in the third bedroom, but has grown into its own office space (in the converted garage).

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