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[quote=Anonymous]In Asia, they potty train early.  In fact, even before a year old, some will start to notice the signs of when a kid is about to pee/poop and hold the child over the toilet (or the side of the road, wherever the place to toilet is) to get the child used to not peeing/pooping in the diaper.

Part of this is practical -- don't have the resources we have, endless supply of disposable diapers and/or washing machines, et cetera.

Out of necessity, kids learn earlier.

Personally, I think if a person waits too long, the child gets set in his/her ways and/or lazy and/or stubborn.  Remember the defiance phase starts in the 2s (the "no" phase).  A child is actually physically ready to toilet train much earlier than people think.

The concept of waiting until the child lets you know he/she is ready is kind of ridiculous.  The reason it is ridiculous is because if a kid is wearing disposable diapers that are very effective at keeping him/her dry and the diapers are changed frequently, there is very little incentive to change ways and use a potty.

Waiting until the kid shows he/she is ready really only works if the kid wears cloth diapers and actually has an incentive to not want to poop/pee in his/her pants.

Why should it matter to other people when your child potty trains?  Well, for one, it is a resource issue.  The sooner a kid learns to use the potty, the fewer disposable diapers have to be used.  (again, different story with cloth diapers.)

The other thing I would mention is that we are constantly hearing about how poor American kids perform academically compared to other countries.  Perhaps we should start looking at where American parenting differs from other cultures.  and potty training is a very good example.  Most other places in the world, people do not wait until a kid is 3 or older to start training.  And most other places also do not take the "wait until the kid expresses interest" approach.

I understand correlation does not equal causation.  But it is interesting that about the same time the potty training model changed in this country (i.e. people starting waiting later and/or waiting until the kid showed interest), our children gradually started to perform at lower levels compared to the rest of the world.

I'm not saying people should be cruel and make potty a miserable experience for kids.  But I do think we've gotten a little ridiculous with the passive model of parenting.

Flame away.  Honestly, I don't care how people raise their children.  But I do observe trends, and I am going to state how I see things.  If my opinion offends you, then that's fine.  Just as much as you have a right to parent how you choose, I have a right to have an opinion about how horribly behaved and downright lazy so many children are and how that might be connected to how they are parented.[/quote]

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