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Everything in the pot

27.2.2018

Translation: machine translated

In the 1950s, children's toilet training sometimes began just a few months after birth. Today we know that intensive potty training does little and that becoming dry is primarily a maturing process. However, this does not mean that parents have nothing to article.

Everyone advises parents-to-be to go to the cinema as often as possible before the due date. However, nobody points out how much you should also value your undisturbed sessions at the cinema. Because those too will soon be over: Not only will the baby wake up at the precise moment when his mother finally sighs and sits on the toilet seat. The day will also come when the child stands next to you on the toilet, peers into the bowl and asks in a serious tone what kind of business you are about to do.

And that's a good thing, says someone who should know: Swiss paediatrician Remo Largo has spent a long time studying how children are taught to be clean. He found that parents are also role models for their children when it comes to getting dry. It also turned out that intensive potty training does very little. In the 1950s, mothers sometimes held their babies over the toilet bowl or a nappy before they could even sit up. At the age of one at the latest, practically all children were regularly put on the "Häfeli". Things were very different in the seventies and eighties: For children, cleanliness education now generally began more than a year later, i.e. sometime between the ages of two and three - and was much less intensive.

Those who attribute this change solely to a more liberal and child-centred upbringing do not do justice to the circumstances at the time. It certainly played a role that parents were now better informed that the time of becoming dry did not depend on the intensity of potty training, but on the child's stage of development. However, the decisive factor was probably the invention that finally put an end to the constant washing of cloth nappies: the disposable nappy.

Facilitating independence

A child's bowel and bladder control is a maturing process that takes different lengths of time depending on the child. It cannot be accelerated by putting your daughter on the "Häfeli" fifteen times a day. However, fathers and mothers can still contribute to their children becoming dry, as Largo writes in his book "Babyjahre". The best way for them to do this (like the child's older siblings) is not to make a big secret of the small and big business and to give the child's curiosity enough space. They can also facilitate the path to independence with a few simple measures:

Elasticated waist instead of buttons
The child should be able to pull their trousers and pants down and up on their own. This is easier if the garment has an elasticated waistband instead of a zip or buttons. To make it as easy to put them on as it is to take them off, it's best to show your child how to grab the waistband from behind and pull it over their feet.

Pot or toilet?
Some little ones don't even want to go to the potty, but prefer to go straight to the toilet like the grown-ups - but they're not entirely comfortable with this. A toilet attachment that reduces the size of the toilet seat or a Schemeli on which they can place their feet takes away their fear of falling or slipping into the toilet bowl.

Normal night-time mishaps

Children realise at around one year of age at the earliest, but usually later, that they need to pee. Parents can recognise this development by the fact that children now grimace when they are about to go to the toilet, nervously stumble around or disappear behind the couch as quiet as a mouse. However, it usually takes a while before the cleanliness training is complete: According to Largo, most children become clean and dry in the course of their third and fourth year, girls on average a little earlier than boys. The big business can usually be kept under control a little sooner than the small business. It often takes a few months before the little ones realise that they need to pee, even at night. This means that a night-time mishap can still occur from time to time even at nursery age, but this is no cause for concern.

So the next time your two-year-old calls out "Mummy, muesch Bisi mache oder Gaggi?" after you on the way to the restaurant toilet - don't worry. He is in the process of making a new world his own.

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Ümit Yoker

uemityoker@gmx.net

A passionate journalist and mother of two sons who moved from Zurich to Lisbon with her husband in 2014. Does her writing in cafés and appreciates that life has been treating her well in general. <br><a href="http://uemityoker.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">uemityoker.wordpress.com</a>

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Everything in the pot

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