Psychology

I have to admit that I was quite young when I had my first child. Each and every developmental stage of child was challenging to me as I had no one to help me at home and I was working part time. The toughest part of the job was when I had to potty train my kid when she was two years old. During the summer vacation (I was teaching in university ), I took off for a week to be with my kid to train her as it was time for her to go to play school and they would not let the child be in diaper.

The first thing to do was to change the absorbing diaper to cloth diaper. She used to hate the feeling of wetness each time she leaked. As the time went by I took her to the toilet when I went in. She watched me in curiosity but, understood that she needs to take a leak in the toilet. I applied the same principle to train her for potty but this was not easy. I got some small plastic potty seats to be placed in different rooms. I did speak to her constantly. I did introduce her to videos of children using potty seats. The potty seats were kept in corners and were introduced to her as her toilets. At first she sat on it to imitate the kids in the video and then for the fun of it. When she did make the face to go next time, I asked her to sit on the potty seat. When this was repeated for a week, she started using the potty seats to go. The only thing I had to do after that was to shift the potty seats to the toilets and she would search for it and go in the toilet.

Yet, accidents happened all the time and I learned to be patient with this entire learning process. It is important to talk to the child during the entire process. I know my kid understood the importance and I would give half of the credit to my communication skills with her.