Then, if the baby was getting ready to urinate or defecate, the mothers seated their babies in positions that mimic sitting on a toilet.įor the paper, 56 families in that Digo community were interviewed and observed while they went through the process of toilet training their infants. In traditional Digo communities in Msambweni, Kenya, an interesting example of potty training was described in a paper in the journal Pediatrics in 1977.Īccording to the paper, mothers monitored their babies after feeding or napping and searched for signs that they had to pee or poop. Here is a sampling of how some parents around the world approach potty training. In other words, tiny tots living closer to the equator might potty train at younger ages than those farther from the equator, based on Spiesel’s idea. “It seems bizarre and a crazy notion, but the reality is, the further you go from the equator, the colder things are, and I think that that’s the central issue.” “The average age of toilet training around the world seems to be directly proportional to the latitude,” he said. “This is something that has never actually been studied, but it’s something that I clearly have noticed over many years,” Spiesel said. The idea is that the farther from the equator a family lives, the slower children are to potty train, said Spiesel, a pediatrician in Woodbridge, Connecticut, and clinical professor of pediatrics at Yale University’s School of Medicine. Sydney Spiesel, point to climate conditions as having an influence on toilet training. “It’s hard to say one is better than the other when they all work 99% of the time.” “Then there’s this new move – the elimination communication – where parents pick up on cues to get children to the bathroom,” he said. “If you’re in a third-world country and you can’t just walk to the store and get Pampers, then obviously, you’re going to be a bit more urgent with it and train them around the age of 1,” said Metcalfe, a pediatric urologist and associate professor in the University of Alberta’s Division of Pediatric Surgery in Canada. Peter Metcalfe, point to how access to certain resources can influence the way a family handles toilet training. That’s right: Even though everyone poops, as the classic children’s book says, not everyone learns about it the same way.Īcross cultures, parents tackle toilet training with an array of techniques, and they introduce training to their little ones at various ages. Then, there are those who wear split-crotch pants and squat when nature calls. Others learn about the toilet by 6 months old. Some children wear diapers until they are 3.
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