Dear Mr. Dad: When is the right time to start potty training a baby? A friend of ours says she heard of a baby who was using the toilet on her own at 8 months.

Other friends say that we shouldn’t expect our daughter to get out of diapers for more than two years.



People will tell you all sorts of things about the babies they knew who were out of diapers before they could walk. But no matter what anyone says, or how much you might want to believe the stories, they’re really just urban nursery legends.

First of all, there’s really no such thing as potty training; your child will learn to use the toilet on her own only when she’s ready. And at eight months or even a year, she’s simply incapable of controlling her bowels or bladder. Sure, she may grunt and groan while producing a bowel movement, and everyone in the house (except her, of course) will be able to smell it, but she has no idea there’s any connection between the feeling she gets when she’s filling a diaper and the actual contents. If anybody’s being “trained” at this age it’s the parents, who may have learned to recognize their baby’s signals and rush her to the toilet. But rest assured, the baby can’t do it on her own.

At about 15 months your baby will begin associating what’s in her diaper with herself and may announce from time to time that she’s produced something. But only after the fact. At eighteen months she may occasionally announce that she is about to do something, but she still hasn’t learned how to hold it in long enough to get to a toilet. For the best results, unless your child is extremely interested, wait until she’s at least two before seriously starting to “train” her.

In the meantime, however, you can help increase your child’s awareness of what’s going on in her diapers by talking about the process as it’s happening. As you’re changing her, show the baby what she’s done, but don’t emphasize the yuckiness of it. Instead, say something admiring, like “Hey, that’s pretty impressive – someday you’ll do this in the toilet like me and mommy.”