Having three children, now (thankfully) all out of diapers, I've researched and written on the subject.
One thing I was surprised to learn was that children today are potty-training much later than they were 50 and even 100 years ago. With technology, the internet and the advances in medicine and science, it's almost hard to comprehend that potty-training has actually regressed. We're so used to faster-better-new-and-improved-at-your-fingertips-millisecond EVERYTHING ALL THE TIME in 2015, that it's completely contrary to all of the progress we've made in other areas.
Why is this? I did some more research and a little brainstorming. After a quick Google search, I found and enjoyed reading:
A History of Potty Training. The invention of
disposable diapers has actually negatively impacted how quickly children potty train—if you are using age as a measure. According to
PottyTrainingConcepts.com:
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In the 1950s, almost a 100% of children wore cloth diapers and 95% of these children were trained by the age of 18 months.
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In the 1980s, about 50% of children wore cloth diapers, while the other 50% wore disposable diapers and only about 50% of the children were potty trained by the age of 18 months.
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Today, almost 90-95% of children wear disposable diapers and only about 10% of children are potty trained by the age of 18 months.
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Today, the average age for potty training is about 30 months with the age ranging from 18-60 months.
Later potty-training has also drastically increased how much diaper waste goes into landfills each year. If 95% of children were potty trained by the age of 18 months in the 1950 but today are potty trained at an average of 30 months (and some as many as 60 months!) that’s between an additional 2,500 to 3,000 diapers for every year over the of age one-and-a-half years! I got this figure by using 8 diapers a day. Infants will go through more and toddlers less but 8 seemed like a good average number. (You don’t see disposable diaper companies complaining about this epidemic).
There are a number of reasons why potty training is happening later, such as disposable-diapering parents being less motivated than cloth diapering parents (though thanks to the invention of the washing machine, even cloth diapering parents today are less motivated than those who had to hand-wash diapers many decades ago), the change from the
parent-centered approach to toilet training to the
child-centered approach to training and the fact that we are just too dang busy. We want results and we want them now! Who has time for wet pants or poop nuggets on the floor?
Raise your hand if you have put-off potty training because: You had a 3 hour flight to the opposite coast to see family coming up? Or because you wanted to drive to see the Grand Canyon this summer? Or because your third child spends so much time in the car while his older siblings are shuttled to and from school, to karate, to playdates, or while you run to the grocery store?
I am just as guilty as anyone. These days our lives are so fast-paced, we often don't seem to have the time or the patience for things that mean slowing down, staying home, putting down our phones and letting the dishes sit in the sink. But that's what we need to do to really pay attention to the cues our toddlers and their bodies are giving us.
How did you potty train your child? If you have another child, do you plan on doing anything differently the next time?
I have 8 kids. With my first six kids I started potty training at two years old. They all wore disposible diapers, but I didn’t used pull ups, we went straight to the old fashioned thick training underwear made of cloth. The first three kids took a month or two to train. The fourth and fifth took about nine months. The sixth had bladder issues and didn’t have daytime control until 3 years 3 months and didn’t have night time control until 7.5 years. My 7th used cloth diapers and after the long down out training of my 6th, I just waited until he was 2.5 and started telling him when he got bigger he would wear underwear and use the potty and that 3 year olds don’t wear diapers. About a week before he turned three he woke up one morning and refused diapers. That was it, no accidents, no struggles. With my 8th, who is also cloth diapered, I am doing the same thing. Part of me wants to just train him and get it over with, but the other part of me is a little lazy and doesn’t want the struggle!
While 60 months is a bit alarming. I wanted to cloth diaper because I wanted to save money and at least try to help the environment (the thought of my kids diapers sitting in a landfill for hundreds of years really bothered me long before I was ever pregnant). That being the case I really do not mind if my child is a little older when we start to potty train. I’d like her to be confident and want to do it. I figure that way there may be less “stop and go” attempts and she will transition into it fairly . I could be completely wrong though, this is my first child!
I’ve potty trained two using disposables only. I’m hoping to use cloth with my third. It will be interesting to see if there is a difference.
Our oldest is still having accidents and he’s almost 4
I thought cloth diapering would make it much easier to PT my daughter (my son was in disposables and was hard to PT), but it didn’t. She is 20 1/2 months and screams when I put her on the potty. It’s a combination of parental discipline and readiness.
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