The importance of setting clear expectations in the potty training.
Setting clear expectations in potty training plays a crucial role in the early stages of training.
- Guidance and Direction: Clear expectations provide direction, helping the child understand what is required of them and how to achieve their goals.
- Consistency: They promote consistency in behaviour and actions, which is necessary for learning and development and helps establish routine and reinforce desired behaviour.
- Reduce stress: Knowing what is expected of them can reduce stress and anxiety for both children and parents. Clear expectations create a sense of predictability and stability, fostering a positive growth and learning environment.
- Motivation: Clear expectations can be motivating, as they provide a clear target to strive for.
- Progress tracking: Clear expectations make tracking progress and measuring success easier. By clearly defining goals and milestones, parents can assess their child’s performance and adjust as needed to stay on track.
Setting Clear Expectations:
The things that might be clear to adults don’t mean that are clear to children. This thing I learned in my early parenthood. When I was trying to learn my daughter’s potty training I came to know you should be very specific in communications before an expectation of her to use the potty independently.
Here are examples of clear expectations:
Unclear:” It is time to go potty!”
“Go Potty” might be confusing to a child. This is because sometimes potty is used as a noun or sometimes as a verb.
A child might wonder:
Am I supposed to go to the potty?
Am I supposed to sit on the potty?
Am I supposed to pee?
Am I supposed to poop?
Clear: “It is time to sit on the potty and try to pee”.
Unclear: “You need to poop in the potty.”
This is unclear because the child might not feel the need to poop at that moment. They might be resistant to trying because they are thinking, I don’t feel like I need to poop right now!.
Clear: “After Lunch, You will try to poop in the potty”.
Setting clear expectations is very helpful for young toddlers who have less vocabulary or still learning to communicate.
