Many “potty training experts” would have my head for writing this blog post, but who cares? It’s the internet, so there is freedom of expression.
Just so we are clear before you read on, this post is totally against the 3 days potty training method. My aim in the end is to get you see reasons why you should not adopt this method of potty training for your kids and also point you in the direction of choosing the best potty seat for your child.
Although there are various methods online as regards the effectiveness of this method. All you have to do is look deeply, you would see that they’re all media noise, and there is no solid evidence to back up this ridiculous claim of potty training a toddler in three days or less.
The most important aspect of any training is readiness. Take for instance when I wanted to learn how to drive, I was ready for it, all my mates were driving already, so I need to learn very fast.
It took me just a week to learn the basics and in two weeks, I was driving on major roads. Did I became an expert after the first two weeks? No! Did I began to drive all by myself after the first week? No!
I drove around (as a learner) for over a month with a trainer sitting right next to me. The moral here is that, you don’t pick up a lifetime skills in just three days.
You keep learning it day by day, it may take a month, or more, but you keep learning, until you attain the level of unconscious competence when you can do it with your eyes closed and with minimal concentration. It’s been over five (5) years that I began driving now, and I can drive and answer a phone call at the same time. Which means I no longer use all my brain in concentrating when I drive.
Apply this to the potty training, and you won’t find it difficult in seeing reasons why potty training your kids in three days isn’t a good idea.
But first, let’s start with the obvious…
Imperfect:
It’s an imperfect system of potty training your kid. There is no guarantee of result in three days. The idea behind this method is that you should clear out your entire plan for a particular weekend and dedicate the three days (Friday to Sunday) in potty training the toddler.
What this method implies is that, the teaching isn’t at the kid’s pace, but rather at the parent pace. Obviously, this screams “pressure” and you really don’t want to mount pressure on kids while potty training them.
Just a quick question; what happens if the weekend pass by and still kids can’t use potty on their own? Would you record it as a failed attempt on their own part or on your own part?
The method is just imperfect, so don’t use it.
No fun:
Of the truth, there is no fun I washing dirty underwear, cleaning poo and toilet every 30 minutes or so, but there is fun in teaching your kids something very crucial as they gradually integrate into the society.
You can make potty training fun by planning a star reward system for kids, reading them books while they use the toilet, singing them various potty training songs and several other things you can possibly think of. But how do you do that when you’re in such a hurry to get it over with? Even when there are accidents or kids make mistake every once in a while, you would probably be all over them because you’re in such a hurry to get the whole thing done in three days.
The truth is that; potty training takes time, more importantly is that, the method that would work for child A might just not work for child B, and it might take child A several weeks to get it right, while child B might really take his time; say months before getting it right.
All this is to say that, there is no magic formula to doing potty training the right way. You just need to monitor each child and use what would work best for the based on their personality. Resolving to the use of 3 days training method won’t help that much.
In a bid not to be too bias, let me quickly point out that, some kids takes a day or two to learn how to use potty, both for defecation and urinal purposes. But this would not work for a larger percentage of kids.
The success in kids that take less amount of time has been associated with their age and readiness to learn. Older kids tend to learn faster, and they are also ready to learn because they’re tired of the diapers already, so it might take them less than three days to learn how to use the toilet properly.
Other than that, trying to train a three years old or less in three days is not really a good idea, and it might eventually end up as a counter-productive measure.