and feeling important. They want to help cook and clean and do
chores around the house—it’s the perfect time to hand them their
very own responsibility. You want to take advantage of this eager-to-
please phase. It’s natural and it’s good and, unfortunately, it will go
away. Trust me.
Mind you, there are always going to be exceptions. More recently,
I’ve seen an increase in moms who know their kids are very capable
of potty training before twenty months. And of course, there are
plenty of children who potty train just fine in the thirty- to thirty-
six-month age range. Still, in my experience, this age range is when
things start getting tricky. And in case you didn’t get my memo,
waiting until after three is going to bring you struggles. We’ll deal
with the specific issues associated with younger and older kids in the
later chapters.
Why this time frame?
- There are certain “windows of opportunity” in development, during which a
developmental task can be accomplished with the least amount of conscious effort
on the part of the child. There are many such windows of opportunity during
childhood. For example, weaning. Many kids wean at twelve months, because it’s
usually very easy to do at that particular age. Four months, twelve months, twenty-
four months, and thirty months are documented windows of opportunity for easy
weaning. Can it be done at other times? Sure, it just requires a little more effort on
the part of both mother and child. Similarly, there’s a window of opportunity for
learning a language. Researchers and parents alike know how effortlessly a child
picks up a second language before the age of five. The same is true for learning a
first language. I once worked with a child who had been secluded in a studio
apartment for all of her five years of life with her drug-addicted mother. Because of
her limited social exposure, she missed the window of opportunity to learn her first