An important part of a child’s development is to achieve control over his passage of urine and stool. From birth till the age of one and a half-year, the child passes both urine and stool involuntarily in his diapers. Only after that is some sort of control achieved. Culturally, human beings, as opposed to animals, are supposed to pass urine and stool in the toilet. We associate it with a sense of cleanliness.
In their eagerness to make the child toilet trained; the parents want to start it early and most of them harbour the “grossly erroneous” concept that it is an art that has to be learned by the child and taught by them. So they go about it in a most sincere and serious manner believing that they should and can make the child toilet – trained; the earlier the better. They think that if they take their child to the potty, make him sit there, and say something like “sss, soo” etc. in a long drawn out voice, the child will ultimately associate it with the fact that the parents want him to pass urine and so will do so. Incidentally, there is no such “sound” invented for passage of stools; and even if there is one, I am not aware of it.
What I have come across often is that at the age of 7-9 months (when the child is able to sit without support), the parents will make him sit on the potty at a specified time, usually for 20-30 minutes. Firstly parents will notice the usual time in a day that the child passes stools, which is usually after having food; as a reflex called “gastrocolic” reflex is active at that time. Then daily, at approximately the same time, they will carry the child and make him sit on the potty.
More often than not, the child will pass stools in the potty, as it is his usual time to pass the stools. The parents consider this to be a sign of success. They think that their baby is becoming toilet trained at as young an age as 8-10 months, and so are understandably pleased with themselves that their efforts and perseverance are paying dividends. They take pride in letting others know that their child passes stools in the potty at such a young age. On hearing this, other parents also want to try it out, thus perpetuating this type of “toilet training”.
Unfortunately, all such parents are labouring under a delusion, which I am afraid is borne more out of ignorance than anything else. As modern education doesn’t teach us practical aspects of baby care, educated parents also harbour such “erroneous” ideas. All anecdotal reports of a child being toilet trained early reflect only one thing and that is “conditioned reflex.”
The child is conditioned after a few days to pass the stools by straining reflexly, whenever the child feels the potty seat under him. The child is really not conscious of the bowel movement nor has it come under his voluntary control. It just reflects a training that is based on conditioning the child rather than a true and real toilet training (remember Pavlov’s experiments of conditioning reflexes with the dogs). Infact all such children have to be retrained later on in life, which now is a true and learned training. It is believed that retraining of such children is more difficult than those children who have not been toilet trained and conditioned earlier. So I don’t recommend toilet training before the child is ready for it.