“We don’t really care right now.”
“We’re going to wait till she’s ready.”
“We’re just being really casual about it.”“We don’t really care right now.”
What I think people mean when they say this is that they’re not
really committed—that it’s not a high priority in their lives right
now. Which is fine. Just be honest with yourself. If it’s not a high
priority with you, it’s not going to be a high priority for your child
either. I spend a great deal of time in my classes on this topic. Often,
parents realize that they are afraid to commit because they don’t
know what to do and they’re concerned that they might fail.
More often, though, parents feel something along the lines of,
“Eh . . . we just don’t feel like it’s that important right now,” “We are
doing other things,” or “What’s the rush? She’ll do it. I mean, she’s
not going to college in diapers, right?” True, your child is most likely
not going to college in diapers. But I routinely get clients who’ve had
to delay preschool because of a lack of potty training. Last
September, two sets of parents came to me after their children were
asked to leave kindergarten for not being trained properly. So yeah, it
might not be vital right this minute, but it’s going to creep up on you
faster than you know. And I’ll be beating this particular horse till it’s
good and dead: the longer you wait to potty train, the harder it gets.
Another reason behind the “we don’t care” attitude is that
something is happening in your life and you know you can’t give
potty training the attention it needs. That’s completely
understandable if there’s actually going to be a break in the action at