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It's every parents worst nightmare, especially if you're a new parent -When to start potty training or toilet training your child.

As the father of a three year old boy, I thought this was going to be something that was fairly easy. After all I have an intelligent son, he can follow basic instructions so where's the problem? I couldn't have been more wrong. Talk about showing how niave you are. All my wife could do at this point as smile and shake her head at my frustration.

My boy can be stubborn at the best of times, but this was taking it to a whole new level. Hequickly learnt that he held the balance of power on when he did and didn't go. It didn't matter how long I made him sit on hte toilet or potty for, if he chose not to go it didn't happen. Invariably within 5 minutes of taking him off the toilet, redressing him and warning him not to pee or poo his pants, that is exactly what he would do. Showing once again that he held the balance of power in this particular situation.

So how have I stopped pulling out my hair and being sent to the looney bin? Well the following are some tips that I picked up and I hope that they can assist you as well.

REWARD

Our son absolutly loves ginger bread men (especially if they are in a spider man shape), so what I would do is tell him beofre I go to work that if all his pee and poos are done in the toilet for the day, then I will bring him home a spider-man gingerbread cookie. Most times, this will do the trick. Some times I have to offer something a little different, it may be a chocolate frog, or a batman ride at the local super market, but so far the reward option has worked the best.

COLD TURKEY

After the initial toilet training period when we knew that **** was more than able to tell he needed to go, we found that when we put him in a pull-up for his nap, he seemed to be worse with not going to the toilet than in the morning before his nap. So we decided that for at least the afternoon nap we would just leave him in his clothes and not put him in a disposable nappy or a pullup (we still do at night time though as he seems to sleep alot more soubldy and is less likely to wake up if he needs to go). After one or two accidents in the verty beginning he seemed to realise that he needed to get up and go else he would end up being wet and uncomfortable when he woke from his nap.

INDEPENDENCE

When we first started toilet training ****, we all went down to the the local deparment store and let him help to chose the unerwear he was going to be able to wear. Of course his first two choices were fairly obviouse, Spiderman and Batman. But we also added some plain and a few differenct basic designs (dinosaurs, areoplanes etc). We nly let him choose which ones to wear when and if he actually made it to the toilet in time to do what he needed to. He absolutely loved the ability to have the independence to choose, and after a few times of being told he pee'd his pants therefore he couldn't choose he soon cottoned on.

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