- Consistency and commitment
That’s it.
We are going to work within the second system. Your child is
special; she has her very own genetic makeup. She has her very own
learning method and speed. We have to honor that, okay? If there
were just one way to potty train your child—absolutely guaranteed, no
hassles, in three days flat—that crap would be on Oprah (or would’ve
been, anyway). It’d be viral in seconds. We’d all know about it. But
we are dealing with humans, who react as individuals and have their
own—albeit, not exactly logical—thought processes, and who not
only know how to push your buttons, they actually installed your
buttons.
Using the potty is both one of the first things you actively teach
your child, and one of the first things he actively learns. What we are
going to discover through this process is how your child thinks.
Having a preconceived notion of how long this will take is REALLY,
HONESTLY going to muck things up for you. You will unwittingly put
too much pressure on your child, and you will drive yourself insane.
Trust me. I know this.
I see people getting tripped up on this all the time. You want to
potty train with consistency, and you don’t want it to take a year.
Realistically, I can tell you it takes most people around seven to ten
days. Through all my years of doing this, I’ve come to believe that
there’s a truly magical window of about two weeks’ duration in each
child’s life during which he will potty train so effortlessly it’s
amazing. However, when those two weeks are going to happen for any
one kid is anyone’s guess, and there’s no outward signal as to when