Parents can delay potty training children until age 2
15 March 2002
Parents can delay toilet training until their child is aged 22-30 months, US researchers say.
Results from their prospective study show most children don't develop toilet-training readiness skills until they are 24 months old.
'Although some boys and girls acquire readiness skills before their second birthday, most do not,' the researchers wrote in the medical journal Pediatrics (2002; 109: e48).
This challenges the conventional wisdom that toilet-training readiness skills develop between 18 and 24 months, they said.
A 2-year follow-up of 267 non-trained children aged 15-24 months showed girls developed toilet training skills earlier than boys.
Girls stayed dry during the day at a median age of 32.5 months, while boys took 35 months.
Girls showed an interest in using the potty at 24 and boys at 26 months; girls stayed dry for 2 hours at 26 months, and boys at 29 months; and girls showed they needed to go to the toilet at 26 months compared with boys at 29 months.
Boys and girls tended to develop readiness skills in the same sequence, the researchers said. However, the normal range for developing toilet-training skills can vary by as much as a year in individual children.
Parents can be reassured that their previous experience of toilet training does not predict when a particular child will develop readiness skills and that attending day care does not seem related to the age that children are trained.
The study was partly funded by a grant from the disposable nappy manufacturer Kimberly-Clark Corporation.
Last Reviewed: 22 March 2002
- Medical Observer Weekly 15/03/02
