Home Hot Topics Articles Directors' Choice Awards About Us / Contact Us Activities & Curriculum Activities for Outcome-Based Learning Arts & Crafts Music for Learning Recommended Reading Sharing Boards: What Do YOU Think? NEWSlink Current National News Conference Calendar Topics In Early Childhood Education Art and Creativity in Early Childhood Education Job Sharing Board State Licensing Requirements Stay Connected! Each month we'll send you an email filled with articles and ideas for your classroom. Subscribe Now Date: 1/8/2004 8:45:00 PM Author: Laura Subject: a 21 month old You need to start breaking him fom the nighttime snacks. It is hard, I know from experience. My husband was the one who kept thinking that if our son woke up he must be hungry and would give him milk or water until he was almost 2. I finally convinced him that our son was mostly waking up out of habit, much like you ca wake up before the alarm goes off. With in a week of breaking my husband from automatically giving him something inthe night, our son was sleeping all night long. And he did not even miss the extra nourishment. In fact, he started eating better during the day. As far as the potty training, I would recommend waiting. My son was 3 before he was interested and then he trained himself in about a week. There are 3 stages in potty development - 1. They are not aware that they are the ones making messy diapers. 2. They are aware that they are making the diaper messy as the do it or as they finish. 3. They recognize the body signals that occur before toileting and start trying to control them. Ready signs include recognizing a soiled diaper and asking to have it removed, fascination with toilets and what others are doing on/around them, and predictable toileting times. My son watched and asked questions for months before he was willing to try on his own. And then his favorite place was outside. It was summer, we live in a rural area, and we let him be naked ocassionally and he caught on quickly. At 21 months, my son was not even close to being interested. If you want your son to become more aware of potty training, you can go ahead and purchase a potty chair and let him get used to seeing it. You can put him on it when you know he is about to void and praise him when he does it there. You can also start preparing him by teaching him things like how to pull up his pants after you change his diaper and asking him to push them down before you change his diaper. But after teaching and working with 2-4 year old for several years now, I know that unless they are interested, no bribe will completely work, and trying to force it too soon only leads to frustration, power struggles between parent and child, and unnecessary stress. The thing that convinced my son to go ahead and use the toilet was after he discovered he could do that much faster than I could change a diaper which gave him more playing time. By the way, one study I read somewhere said that most boys are potty trained at the average age of 3 1/2. And most of those won't stay dry thru the night until 4 1/2. I don't know just how accurate it is but it sur makes sense. I hope you can hang in there! I know those diapers start getting to be old news and expensive by 2 years old. Name: Email: Subject

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