The No-Potty Training Approach: Is It Right Or Wrong?

I’m often surrounded by a group of very intense, proactive mothers, and when it comes to potty training, they have the process nailed down. Most have followed a three-day plan of attack that keeps your kid naked until they feel no choice but to use the potty. It’s a hardcore approach that’s sweeping suburbia and works for just about everyone I know — well, everyone except me.

Other mothers I know started potty training their kids at 1 year old, plopping their little ones on the pot every hour or two until the act became familiar. Typically, this would mean the child was potty-trained by 2 years old.

Maybe I’m not as focused or driven as these moms. Or maybe I’m just tired because my kid has zero interest in doing anything whatsoever on the potty. The last time I read him a potty book, he actually peed on the floor through his diaper halfway through the story. It was funny — in a way.

Then again, this might have nothing to do with me — my son is a strong-willed Scorpio who has his own way of doing things. You should see what he wears to school each day: One day he dresses as a witch. The next day, he's Batman. Today, he's a farmer with groovy sunglasses.

His pre-school teachers who are more grounded and old-school tell me not to worry and that he will let me know when he’s ready. One teacher even left a gum-ball machine in the bathroom. If the kids went on the potty, they got one gum-ball, and two gum-balls if they poop. "They were trained with ease," she tells me.

But is this no-potty training method the right way to actually get my son on the potty?

One mom has told me, “I never potty trained either of my kids and waited for both to be ready. My son was just over 4 and decided he wanted to go to the bathroom standing up one day. My daughter was 2 and said no more diapers and never needed one again.”

Another mom adds, “We never pushed the potty training. We asked if they wanted to use the potty, and gently reminded, but that was it. It took all of the stress out of it! They are now 15 and 18 and are totally trained.” Not sure I find that funny at this point.

This urge to push the potty dates back to 1914, when the book "Infant Care" was the bestselling U.S. publication of all time. The book instructed parents to start potty training as soon as the baby was born. This most likely occurred in an era of large families, when there were no resources like hot water and washing machines, and getting diapers clean was a horrendous chore.

"Mothers had to spend hours each day changing, scraping, scrubbing, boiling, wringing, hanging, and folding diapers ... the burden fell entirely on mothers. No wonder they were willing to go to any lengths to get their kids to do it in the pot,” according to Alison Mack in the book "Toilet Learning: The Picture Book Technique for Children and Parents."

Today, women might be burdened in different ways. We are overworked, over scheduled and stressed out, and we need our kids potty trained by 3 years old, darn-it! It doesn’t help that most daycares and pre-schools will not change diapers after the age of 3, so the modern-day pressure is real. I’m lucky that my son's teachers are still changing his diapers — although, I haven’t asked about the 4-year-old class yet. Hopefully I won’t have to.

But still, I can't push a child too hard, especially a boy like mine. When the people of an Indonesian island were asked by an anthropologist when a child is ready to learn bowl and bladder control, their answer was simple: "when the child is old enough to understand," Mack writes.

Honestly, I might need a little more understanding too when it comes to bringing up the potty with my son. But for now, I will take a baby step back and try this no-training approach — and also pray for the best. And on that note, I'm smelling some roses in my toddler's pants and need to excuse myself.

Update: My son recently finally became potty trained — without real training though. He got on the potty one night for fun and I brought him to school the next day in superhero underwear! We had a few messy accidents but eventually, he caught on. I listened to my gut and didn’t really follow any plan, which was the best plan of all. Today, we are in disbelief every time he puts himself on the potty and does his magic.

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