Child-led Toilet Training Promotes Emotional Self-Awareness

In adopting a child-led approach to toilet training, where the child chooses whether to use the toilet and when to wear a diaper or underwear, Kseni Belous Enabi makes a connection between children having control over this developmental milestone and mastering emotional self-awareness: There is one specific outcome I witnessed that I have never seen mentioned anywhere before: children learn to understand their emotional state and to evaluate what they can and cannot handle at any given time…Eventually all of them stopped using diapers and would choose to wear them on very special occasions. These could be days when a child got a new bed, or mommy went to a hospital to give a birth to a sibling, or when they slept over at grannies, or a parent traveled for work. On those days, they felt less secure and more sensitive than usual, and did not have the emotional capacity to control or to remember to use a potty/toilet. They just could not or did not want to deal with that on those days and we trusted their decision. Witnessing this, I was struck to the core to see: how exactly emotional regulation is a part of the process; how much more complicated the whole process is; how well children know their bodies and minds; and, how well they learned to listen to themselves.   Belous Enabi's full article, "I Want to Wear a Diaper Today! What We Learned From Child-Led Toilet Learning," reflects her direct experience, grounded in Pikler® and RIE® approaches to caring for young children.

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