Toilet training
A child toilet training.
Toilet training (or potty training) is the process of teaching children to use the toilet rather than diapers for excretion. The ability to use the toilet is a development skill that a child cannot master until they are ready both mentally and physically, thus it cannot be rushed. Children are often toilet trained between the ages of 12 months and 3 years, but each child starts and completes their training at different times. Girls are usually toilet trained before boys of the same age, but a boy could be toilet trained at two while a girl not until age four.
Psychologist Sigmund Freud and many after him believed that training to use the toilet was one of the most formative events of the human psyche, introducing to the child that social imperatives can take precedence over bodily desires.
This article will cover several topics including when is a child ready to toilet train, how to start toilet-training, and some parent's delay of toilet training in recent years.