Those of you who have not raised children would be surprised, I think, by how exercised people get about toilet training. I don't mean the toilet training of their own kids; I mean, people get really worked up about the toilet training of other people's kids.
Let me give you an example. In the course of a discussion on another topic I was participating in at a parenting bbs, I mentioned in passing that we were in the process of working on toilet training with my then-27-month-old son. I was not prepared for the near-flame-war that ensued. The first response accused me of "pushing" my son; other readers concurred, opined that I was going to do him irreparable damage, and asserted that no boy can ever be toilet trained before the age of three.
I replied, quite reasonably I thought, that we had begun teaching my son to use the potty because he had been coming to us and saying, in so many words, "I want to pee in the potty." It had been clear for a few weeks that he was physically ready for toilet training: he knew when he was going to pee, and more than once, while hanging around the house naked, had decided where he was going to pee. We had been watching for signs of intellectual interest, and after Eric figured out that a couple of his friends who used to wear diapers were now peeing in the toilet, the interest came on full-steam, and once we started working on it, progress was steady.
The other parents adopted a new tactic: denying that my son was "actually" potty trained. "I don't consider any child truly potty-trained," one mother said, "until he can take himself to the bathroom, take down his pants, get onto the regular toilet, use it, wipe himself, flush, dress himself, and wash his hands."
My son fails her definition by, let me see, six of the eight factors. Yet it is nonetheless true that he has been out of daytime diapers for over four months now. Is he toilet-trained, or isn't he?
I'm not going to argue the point. Unlike many parents, I do not see toilet-training as a competition. I don't think my son "wins" if he's toilet-trained earlier than yours, or loses if he's not. It looks to me like other parents do feel that way, though, on some level at least, or they wouldn't work so hard to develop definitions of toilet-training that define other people's children as "not toilet trained." The moms on my bbs were not unique; I hear variations on "she says her child is toilet-trained but really she's just trained herself to take him to the toilet," or "she says he's toilet-trained but he still wears diapers to bed," or "she says he's toilet trained but I saw him wet his pants on the playground the other day," all the time. I was triggered to think about this topic by an article in a parenting magazine I read in the o.b.'s waiting room last week in which an expert smugly said, "No child is really toilet-trained unless they are at least three years old and have gone six months without an accident." That strikes me as setting the bar pretty high.
I've only ever taught one kid to use the toilet, so I'm no expert. But I've watched friends do it, too, and here's what seems true to me: toilet-training is a long process in many stages that, for most kids, extends well into the fourth year. I have one friend whose 2-year-old daughter announced one day that she was going to use the potty from then on, and simply did, but with that exception, most parents I know have shepherded kids through a months-long process of mastering one skill, then another, then another, and no matter how early the kids start--even if that "early" start is appropriate and successful, as I would argue my son's was--they finsih up sometime between three and a half and four years old.
My son right now is out of daytime diapers and perfectly reliable when in the care of his parents; when out in public, we take a little more leadership to get him into bathrooms, but at home we trust him to tell us he needs to go. He sleeps in a diaper, which comes off dry some mornings and wet on others. When he's in the care of other adults than us, which happens rarely, he tends not to tell them he has to pee, so it's very important we leave a clean outfit when we drop him off. He needs help dressing and undressing, and wiping when he poops. It makes him nervous to sit on the big toilet seat, so we have replaced the diaper bag with a tote bag containing a potty-seat insert. He's come a long way since we started in July, but he's got plenty of work for the year--or more--ahead.
I wanted to write a piece arguing passionately that we quit competing about when our kids get out of diapers, but as I re-read this I think it comes off as pretty defensive. "Hey, you nasty moms out there, my kid really is toilet trained!" Or else it seems like I'm bragging in the guise of issuing a plea for tolerance ("Can't we all get along, even though my son is so clearly superior to yours?"). But my intention is to argue for taking each child at her or his own pace, and appreciating each child's accomplishments. I don't want to hear another conversation about what criteria a child needs to meet to be "really" toilet trained; I'd much rather just help any child I know celebrate each step along the way.