Part 1 was about competitive schooling.

Part 2 is about competitive toilet training and weaning…..

In the United States we tend to use a calendar or an aging system to mark when children should do things. If you ask most American parents when their children were weaned or toilet trained they will give you the child’s age at the time of the “event.”

Parents sometimes feel that the earlier the child is toilet trained, the more “brownie points” they [the parent] get.

In some cultures toilet training is just not an issue. There is rarely pressure on the child to “act like an adult” and use the bathroom. Again, in the USA parents tend to compete to be able to say, “my child was fully toilet-trained at X age.”

Sadly X may be an age at which toilet training is not all that probable or even possible. I have seen too many cases of child abuse resulting from a child wetting a diaper when the parents thought the child should have stopped doing so.

Regarding weaning, in many places in the world, an infant is breast-fed for long periods of time. [And great that more recently there has been a move in the United States to also encourage longer periods of breast-feeding.]

Still, some USA parents pride themselves for having their child drink out of an infant cup at an early age. No bottles for these competitors!

When parents ask me what's the best time for "x" – I tend to ask back "Is the time an important issue?"

And "why?"

Next: sports, birthday parties and ?

please suggest more areas where you see competing

Comments? Thoughts? Thank you.

In my years of being a professor, therapist and/or friend – I have been asked so many times about toilet training that I almost scream.  It would have been better to ask each person for a dollar…then I’d be extremely wealthy.  Yes – I did answer them all but I never wrote down what I said…

So here am I years later, still getting questions about toilet training and still thinking about a good answer.  It finally came to me: you have to decide whose poop it is and whose pee it is!  Then you will be able to choose what comes next: your toilet training or your child’s.

Read the entire article about toilet training