Question
What are verbal readiness behaviors for potty training?
Answer
- Your child knows his body parts.
- Your child can tell you, first when he’s pottied in his diaper, and then before he’s pottied in his diaper.
- Your child follows simple directions—“Quick, run to the bathroom!”
- Your child tells you what he needs.
- Your child says he wants to “do it myself.”
from The Potty Training Answer Book
We want them to have verbal readiness skills. They have to start to understand that their body parts have names and we can talk about body parts. You also want to make sure parents are really clear on the body part names you'll be using in school so that everybody is communicating well and efficiently.
You want the child to be able to tell you before he's pottied in his diaper and then after he's pottied. Is it a verbal readiness skill that he's already gone and tells you that he has to go potty? It is because now you're making a language-potty connection. It's okay that you missed an opportunity or they haven't gotten to the next step, but once they give you that teaser, then you know there's pee pee in their diaper. I can change it. Next time or one day you'll decide to put the pee pee in the toilet.
They can follow simple directions. They have to be able to have this verbal interaction because pottying is not only a beautiful configuration of developmental skills all in alignment, but it's also at a stage when children may be most resistant to having somebody else tell them what to do or manage their world.
We always have this power issue that is side by side and a control issue with potty learning, which to me just makes it that much more exciting developmentally. You want to be able to say, “Quick, run to the bathroom,” and have them have ears for it. Then they have to have the emotional readiness to think, hmm, I'm with her on this or with him on this.
You want the child to be able to tell you what he needs in a very simple way when they are early in the language stages, and then more down the road. Early on they just need to say, “Oh, pee pee.” You just want the child to tell you if he has to go and what he needs. The child needs to know, I'm here to assist you and I'm on your side. Then when you get to the big struggles, such as “I don't want to let it out because it's going to splash me when it poops in the toilet” or “I don't want to go because I have to know how to ask for help.” I have to know how to communicate fears and anxieties in a verbal and behavioral way. I want them to be able to say they want to do it themselves because I want them to take on the responsibility. We’ve now discussed the verbal and social-emotional readiness behaviors.
This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Potty Training at School, by Karen Deerwester, MA, EdS.
