I bought a potty for my son Nathaniel when he was about 18 months old and put it next to our upstairs toilet. For months he would practice sitting on it, clothed and unclothed, and he would imitate us when my husband and I used the toilet. It was six months before he actually started to use it, but in retrospect it seems that it really helped that he had time to play with it and get used to it before there was any expectation that he actually use it. I was lucky toilet training evolved very smoothly for my son. Yet the transition time still spanned one full year for daytime diapers and another year to stop using a diaper at night.
Toilet training is one of the biggest hurdles for parents of young children.
In the process, we parents will spend a lot of time undressing our kids and sitting with them as they perch on their potties, only to have them hop off and pee on the floor two minutes later. As with any other aspect of parenting, a sense of humour and large doses of patience and compassion will stand us in good measure. If we adopt a child-oriented approach to toilet training and remember that using the toilet is something that our children need to learn rather than something that we need to teach, then the process will go much more smoothly for our children and ourselves.