Potty training is a large and growing product category, which is remarkable for a process that requires, at minimum, a child and somewhere to sit.
Richard finished this year, at three, and we bought most of the things on the second list below before working out that almost none of them were doing anything. Most of what's sold solves a problem the parent has, anxiety, mess, the wish to be finished. The child's problem is different.
What signals readiness
No tool substitutes for this, and starting before it's the single commonest cause of a long and miserable process. Readiness is developmental, and it usually turns up somewhere between about eighteen months and three years, with wide normal variation and later on average for boys. Look for staying dry for an hour or two at a stretch, which tells you about bladder capacity. Look for noticing: telling you during or after, hiding to poo, pulling at a wet diaper. Awareness always arrives before control. Look for being able to walk to the potty and pull clothing up and down with some help, for following a simple two-step instruction, and for some interest in the toilet or in other people using it. And look at what else is going on, because a new sibling, a house move, starting childcare or an illness are all reasons to wait.
A child showing most of these will usually train in days or weeks. A child showing none of them will train eventually, having spent months on it. The waiting is the technique, and it was the hardest part for me.
What deserves owning
Shorter than the shop suggests. Four things, and one of them isn't sold as potty equipment at all.
A floor potty that's low and stable, with her feet flat on the ground. Foot support counts far more than parents expect, because it's what lets a child brace to push, and it's the reason a great many children will wee on a toilet seat and won't poo on one.
A toilet seat reducer plus a step for when you move up, where the step is the important half. Far more underwear than you think you need, and easy clothing with elastic waists only, because buttons, dungarees and tights all cause accidents that wouldn't otherwise have happened.
A waterproof mattress protector, with a spare set of bedding made up underneath it if you're night training. A travel potty or folding seat if you're out a lot, which is the one good gadget in the entire category. A wipeable floor covering or a stack of old towels for the first few days at home. Our whole kit came to about S$70, and the potty was S$12 of that.
Before and after
What's being sold that doesn't help
Most of the rest of it, and some of it works against you.
Musical and light-up potties reward sitting, and several children learn to sit repeatedly just to trigger the tune. They also turn the potty into a toy, which is exactly the wrong association. Potty training watches and timed-reminder apps train the parent's timing, and children trained on a timer often take longer to recognise their own signals, because the device is doing the noticing for them. I haven't checked whether anybody has studied that properly. It's what I saw.
Charts and sticker systems do very little for most children under three. Extrinsic rewards work briefly and are hard to withdraw afterward, and toileting isn't a behaviour that benefits from becoming a performance with a score attached.
Training pants that feel like diapers are doing the diaper's job, because if a child can't tell she's wet then nothing is being learned. Cloth training pants that feel unpleasantly wet are the entire point. Most of the disposable kind aren't.
Three-day potty training programmes need a word. Some children do finish in three days, and those are the children who were already ready. The method doesn't create readiness, and selling it as a deadline generates a great deal of unnecessary distress in people who then believe they've failed.
Anatomically ambitious splash guards, which are the leading cause of a child refusing to sit on a potty a second time.
Night training is a different thing
It isn't trainable in the same sense at all. Staying dry overnight depends on bladder capacity and on a hormone that reduces urine production during sleep, and both mature on their own schedule regardless of what you do.
Bedwetting is common well into the school years and isn't treated as a medical concern until around five, or later depending on which country's guidance you're reading. That means night-time alarms, lifting a sleeping child to the toilet and restricting drinks are all usually premature in the toddler years.
Keep the diaper on at night until it's regularly dry in the morning, and then stop. The mattress protector is the whole kit.
What makes it go well
Almost none of it is equipment, which is inconvenient for anybody selling equipment.
Start when she's ready. Preschools here sometimes apply a certain amount of pressure on this, and developmental readiness doesn't respond to pressure. Let her see people using the toilet, because modelling does more than any product on any list.
Keep the potty wherever the child is for the first week, because a toddler won't interrupt play to walk to another room. Ours lived beside the sofa for a fortnight. React to accidents with nothing at all, no visible disappointment, no dramatic clean-up performance, since accidents are data.
Try not to ask whether she needs a wee every twenty minutes, because that puts the noticing back onto you. Making it part of the routine works better. Expect regression around illness, travel, a new sibling or starting childcare, all of which are temporary and completely normal.
Raise with a doctor: pain or straining, persistent constipation, a child who withholds stool, dribbling that never stops, blood, or a child who was reliably trained and has fully regressed for more than a few weeks. Constipation in particular lies behind an enormous share of stalled potty training and is very treatable once somebody identifies it.
This guide is general information, written to help you understand a topic and ask better questions. It is not medical advice and does not replace your own doctor, midwife or paediatrician. Anything that worries you about your baby belongs with them.