At what age should my toddler be out of nappies?

You don’t systematically have to put your toddler on the potty as soon as they turn 1. However anxious you might be to get rid of those nappies, know that toddlers usually start becoming conscious of their own hygiene around the age 2. So, be patient and understanding to help your baby out of those nappies and on her way to independence.

Determining the age at which a toddler should become clean isn’t easy. The best way to know is to take a look at societies where adults refrain from intervening in their children’s hygienic education – where the concept of ‘toilet-training’ doesn’t exist. Children living in the most remote tribes spontaneously become clean around age 3. Unlike Western toddlers, they don’t have a tendency to play with their faeces and are unaffected by constipation.

In Western societies, 3 years seems too long to wait and parents seek to accelerate their children’s learning process. Some French researchers compiled a record of all the medical recommendations issued in this domain, from Dr Pouliot’s advice, back in 1921, to start “taming” their children from the time they’re born, to present-time French and American paediatricians who agree that the best age to start educating children about personal hygiene is between 15 and 20 months.  

Out of nappies by 36 months

According to the late French paediatrician and psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto, the learning process should begin around age 2, “From the time when a child becomes capable of climbing up and down a ladder on his own, all the way up to the highest step which he hangs on to with his hands, when his nervous system is fully formed and enables him to become clean if he’s willing”.

American paediatrician Benjamin Spock believed that the maturity allowing sphincter control develops simultaneously with part of the psychomotor learning process that needs to precede any attempts to teach children cleanliness. To him, a child mature enough to be “clean” is one who gives one of his toys to his father coming home from work at night, or to a visitor he thinks looks nice, even if he takes it back afterward. It’s a child who enjoys putting objects inside a container, who starts emulating adults in the way he plays and behaves. A child who is proud of what he owns and likes to be congratulated. 

Another American paediatrician, Thomas Berry Brazelton, recommended avoiding coercion of any kind. Most infants, he argued, become clean during daytime at 28 months and at the night at 36 months. He advocated waiting until the child felt like going to the toilet. Parents just need to give their child his own training potty chair, to let him experiment with it and show him how to use it like a big boy. You should by all means avoid showing anger, spanking, jeering, sarcasm or humiliation if the child has a little accident. On the other hand, you should remember to congratulate your baby on behaving like a grown person and no longer like a baby whenever he does what you want him to.

Enjoyment and playfulness without nappies

Toddlers realise that soiling their nappies doesn’t feel good and can start experiencing distinctly ambivalent feelings. Soon enough, they’ll learn to be clean. However, if there has been latent affective conflict between the mother and her child, or if rash “training” leads the child to rebel, refusing to be clean will serve as an excellent means for the child to express his frustration.

The playful aspect of the mother-infant relationship has been completely overlooked in childcare manuals. “Observation shows that nappy-changing and potty-chair sessions can be an occasion for intense exchanges of love between mothers and their children. As is the case with breast-feeding, the enjoyment that can be experienced by the child from the act itself, is overlooked and ignored by childcare specialists”.

Psychoanalysts argue that children whose parents “tame or train” them too soon are far more likely to be perturbed later in life, with such conditions as constipation, behaviour disorders (anger, anxiety and so on), or even psychological issues, such as bedwetting or rigid behaviour…

So the key is to relax, consider this as a natural human process; try to wait until your child is ready and ‘enjoy’ the  journey from nappies to cleanliness that your toddler and you will travel towards together.

Dr Lyonel Rossant, Dr Jacqueline Rossant-Lumbroso

Copyright © 2010 Doctissimo

Posted 01.12.2010

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