Lecture: Complications of Toilet Training

Lecture for Parents at the Center for Meaningful Parenting on “Toilet-Training Complications”

In this lecture, you will gain tools and knowledge to understand the difficulties that may arise during toilet training, what maintains them, and how to overcome them in a calm way suited to the child:

“I thought the poop in his underwear would simply go away on its own… but it isn’t going away.”

“He knows how to use the toilet—so why is he still holding it in?”

“If I don’t remind her to go pee, she simply has accidents.”

If one of these sentences sounds familiar, this lecture is for you.

Two children may do exactly the same thing—for example, poop in their underwear—but the difficulty may begin in a completely different place for each of them.

And if the reason is different, the way to help must also be different.

In the lecture, we will work with real-life cases and examples from the field, using them to understand together:

• Why children who already know where to go still poop in their underwear
• What may really be behind withholding
• Why some children still ask for a diaper to poop, and what the diaper provides for them
• Why a child may know how to pee in the toilet and still have accidents or not initiate independently
• How fear, pain, constipation, difficulty stopping an activity, a need for control, and other factors can look almost identical from the outside
• When reminders, pressure, and our attempts to “help” may actually keep the difficulty in place
• How to begin understanding what my child really needs from me right now

In the lecture, we will become familiar with a practical tool called STEP IN, which invites us, just before trying to change the behavior, to see things through the child’s eyes and try to understand what lies behind it.

You will leave the evening not only with practical tools, but also with a new question to take home:

“Before I try to make my child do something differently—have I understood why they are doing it?”

Of course, we will also leave time for your questions at the end ❤️

We look forward to seeing you,
The Center for Meaningful Parenting Team