The parenting journey: The age two’s ordeals!

Toilet training: How to succeed?

Before venturing any further, let’s set down some psychological facts:

• No parent can toilet train a child until the child is willing to be trained; no matter how many times you drag him to the toilet.
• What motivates a child to give up his confortable diapers is the reward of your love and appreciation.
• If you start before your child is neuromuscularly capable of controlling his rectum muscles (before the age of two), psychological problems await.
• DON’T PUNISH him for accidents or failures! Fear, anger, and stubbornness may be aroused if this task is mishandled by the parents.

So how do we go about it?

1.     Bowel training:

Imagine, while reading this article, a giant appears in front of you, he'll abruptly lift you, and put you on a potty telling you with grave voice: "Now, little angel, do it! Have your bowel movement!" Maddening isn't it? Well, most parents do just the same to their youngsters in order to toilet train them!

Don’t disregard your child’s own trigger mechanism and ask him to have his bowel movement ‘BM’ at a time of YOUR choosing! Forcing him repetitively to do so, will make his natural urge to go to the toilet gradually disappear. Physically it will cause him constipation, and mentally, it will undermine his self-confidence.

The right steps to follow:

•     Teach him words for what’s happening to him; when he is straining and granting, simply say: “You are having a BM in your diaper!” After repetition, he’ll get it and announce it to you every time he is having it.
•     Get him familiar and comfortable with the potty by buying it few weeks before the start of the training.
•     When ready to start, tell him that he is now old enough to use the toilet just like grown-ups do. Show him where and how to have BM. It will be useful if he sees one of his parents using the toilet; children love to imitate. 
•      Let your child’s own internal biological mass movement be the signal to him to go to the toilet. Then reinforce his first success with praise and affection, and simply ignore his failures.

2.     Bladder training:

Bladder control is generally hard for a child to establish than bowel movement control. It has two aspects:

·        Waking control: You can rely on the child’s own biological signal, which is a full bladder. Put him in training pants and tell him he is big enough to pee in the potty. Expect a slow progress as this training won’t happen overnight.

·    Sleeping control: Generally, the natural maturing of the child’s bladder, plus his learning at daytime control, will sufficiently take care of this matter. If he wet his bed at night, change the sheets and point to him that next time he’ll wake up and go to the toilet. Just stay relaxed and casual; the child who will have difficulty with night training is the child who has had various pressures put on him for daytime control. And again: NO PUNISHING over bed-wetting.

If after a week your efforts at toilet training are not paying off, conclude that your child is not ready yet. Revert back to diapers and wait a few months before trying again.

PS:

  When your child keeps soiling his training pants during the first few days, usually you’ll feel inadequate and helpless: “Maybe I’m not very good at this!” “Maybe I’m doing something wrong!”… But remind yourself that the crucial factor in the toilet training is not what you do, but whether the child is ready to learn this new skill. And he will learn it through making lots of mistakes.

Boost your child’s language and reasoning power

Your two-year-old at this stage is extremely hungry for words, so keep talking often to him and pronounce the words clearly. Name everything in your child’s environment, and help him explore more through pictures and books.

The question-asking game:

Your child will be asking you LOTS of questions from now on, take his questions seriously, and answer them thoroughly. How often you answer his questions and how structured are your answers, will play a huge role in your child’s intellectual development.   

Example:

Wrong!

The child: Why the refrigerator is cold inside?

The parent: So that food doesn’t spoil.

The child: Why does food spoil?

The parent: Germs

The child: Where are they?

The parent: You can’t see them; now get away from the fridge and enough questions.

Right!

The child: Why the refrigerator is cold inside?

The parent: The refrigerator has a system that keeps the air cold inside, it keeps the food cool so it won’t spoil; remember that piece of bread I kept too long out of the fridge? How it turned white and had a bad smell?

The child: Yes, we threw it away. But why couldn’t we eat it?

The parent: There are lots of tiny little beings floating in the air, so small we can’t see them. When they find food, they settle on it, eat it, and grow on it. We call them germs and they can give you stomachache if you eat them. Germs hate cold, that’s why we always have to keep food in the fridge, so they won’t come near it…

Play time!                            

The following play tools will allow your child to engage in nonverbal activities that nourish his feeling-life, and enrich his unconscious thinking. You can also use these activities for some calm every once in a while. J 

• Water play: He can use the sink to fill and empty plastic cups or bowels. He’ll enjoy dipping sponges in the water, squeezing them out, and even cleaning and sweeping the table or the floor with it.
• Dirt and clay: Give him the chance to discover the combination of sand and water.
• Play dough: Make it with flour, salt and water and let your child enjoy the textures.
• Provide crayons, large papers (newspaper), paints, whiteboard if possible… these tools will help him develop his writing and drawing skills.  

PS:

Your two-year-old has not yet developed the ability to play with other children, even less to share toys with them. He might love to play at proximity of other kids, but there will be no interchange or cooperation among them. Cooperative play won’t occur till the age of three.

How to deal with jealousy in children:

Typically, your child will have negative feelings towards his younger sibling. How to minimize the impact of this new arrival?

• Tell your child, a couple of months ahead, about the upcoming birth;
• Buy him a baby doll so he can play out his feelings about the new baby;
• Hide some inexpensive presents around the house so when you are away at the hospital, call to tell him where he can find them; he’ll feel thus less abandoned.
• Don’t get consumed by your newborn and neglect the older child; take time to give him some special love and attention.

Your child will react to this new situation in two different ways:

• Babyish behavior: He’ll be seeking attention and love; he may revert back to soiling his underwear, demand a bottle, or ask to be held and rocked. The wrong way to handle this situation is by pointing to your child that he is older and shouldn’t act like a baby; it will only make it worse. The right way is to give your child the opportunity to regress; give him the bottle, don’t scold him if he wet himself on purpose…soon he will voluntarily give up when his temporary infantile need was satisfied.
• Anger and hostility: let him express his bad feelings and then feed them back to him: “You feel angry at little Nour! You feel like Mom loves her more than you?” You can also show that you are on his side and criticize the baby “Listen at the funny noises she makes, isn’t it silly?”