My better half and I were watching tv the other night, when a commercial gave us pause.
The advert was for a diaper, aimed at helping youngsters learn to use the pot. Specifically, if a kid pees in this special potty-training diaper, it turns cool/cold. Our take-away was that if the kid had a cold diaper, they would learn to use the toilet faster, as the cold diaper would be extra uncomfortable.
Wait a minute. If I understand this right, they are suggesting that the best way to potty-train a child is to provide a slight punishment. Granted it’s not an electric shock, but it’s still punishment-based instead of reward-based.
That’s nuts.
Why not incentivise? Why not have a diaper that turns magic colors if it stays dry for more than a certain number of hours? Why not create a toilet seat that sings a happy tune if the kid pees without hitting the seat? Why is society condoning punishment? What is the benefit in that? When did we become numb to the feelings of children? Where is our humanity?
I use this as an illustration: We all need to stop what we’re doing, go for a long, private walk, and convince ourselves to incentivise our kids, and not to punish. Seriously, you know your kid, you love your kid - would you really want them to feel bad about something, especially something as natural as peeing? Would *you* want to be punished for something similar? What if there was an alarm clock that doused you with ice-water if you hit the snooze more than once? What if there was a cellpone that gave you a mild electric shock if you picked it up while driving? Is this how you’d want to learn? Is this how you’d want to spend your life?
[tags]kids, children, parents, potty training, toilet training, kindness, respect, incentives, incentivise, rewardtags]
Photo graciously provided by Ben McLeod, through a Creative Commons license, some rights reserved
6 responses so far ↓
Chris // Sep 3, 2007 at 7:14 am
Stu, my understanding is that these “new improved” disposable training pants are not meant to be punishing, but to mimic the experience that children have when wearing cloth diapers or underpants–that is, a sensation of coolness after pee has been in the diaper for a while. Disposable diapers are so effective at wicking away wetness that children do not experience the sensation of wetness until the diaper is thoroughly soaked (i.e., after hours and hours of wear…very convenient for caregivers, quite unhygienic for the child). It has been suggested the cloth-diapered children potty train at a younger age because they experience the sensation of wetness and begin to associate the urge to pee with that sensation.
The real “punishment,” if you ask me, is that we train our children to ignore their elimination urges for years and years and then expect them to suddenly start paying attention to them. Parents around the world recognize and attend to their infant’s potty cues. Only in the so-called civilized parts of the world do we make children wear their potties in their pants. It’s disgusting, if you think about it for more than a minute. With our son, we practiced “infant potty training” as best we could, which is to say, not very well given we had little knowledge of or support for the practice. Our son, now 19 months old, is ready to potty-train (he’s telling us when he has to go, he can sit on the potty…his only trouble is with getting his pants off himself…so he’s going bottomless at home), extraordinarily young for a boy in the US these days. I don’t know if that’s thanks to our attempts to attend to his potty cues from infancy or just something about him–he is a remarkably fastidious little boy in other areas. Some would say I’m a bad mom for “pushing” him and frankly, in many ways it would be easier for me to not to bother now and let him stay in (cloth) diapers for another year or so, but I can’t help but think he’ll be happier if he doesn’t have to wear a diaper all the time. In fact, he hates to have them put on now (which we still do when we’re going out).
So, it’s a matter of perspective. If wearing a disposable diaper that lets a child experience the equivalent of wetness helps her learn to potty train earlier, isn’t that a good thing for her? She gets to learn her body’s cues again, gets to eliminate with dignity, gets to stop wearing her potty in her pants all day. These new diapers allow a child to understand that “wetness” is a natural consequence peeing her pants. She won’t experience magic colors or other such incentive in her underpants once she starts wearing those, but she will experience coolness in her pants if she pees in them. Her only “reward” for staying dry is the comfortable sensation of being dry. I don’t see any reason to mess with that. If “cool sensation” diapers force parents to change their kids more quickly and help children learn to use the potty earlier, that strikes me as good thing, not a punishment for anyone.
MeMo's Mama // Sep 3, 2007 at 9:33 am
AMEN! I miss the simpler days. What happened to just old fashioned commitment to potty training? We use cloth so the idea of even MORE diapers disgusts me. Also… exactly what CHEMICAL is the baby’s skin being exposed to that causes a cold sensation??
Wacky Mommy // Sep 3, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Yeah, I saw that commercial last week and thought it was a little bizarre.
Karen // Sep 4, 2007 at 9:32 am
I agree with the first poster in that I wouldn’t call it punishment, either–cool nether regions are the natural consequence of peeing in clothing, and a diaper that mimicks that is easier for busy parents to deal with than urine on underpants/pants/shirt/socks/shoes/floor/furniture/child’s hands/dog/what-have-you.
Also, there are disposable training pants out there where, um, the stars turn bright or something like that when the kid pees in the diaper. Or maybe the stars fade? I don’t know. And there are potties that play music. Different tricks work for different kids. Probably nothing in this paragraph is news to you.
We used rewards (stickers, balloons) for our son and he never seemed to care a whole lot about them. I guess it helped him be aware that we cared about him using the toilet, and it gave us something to gush about other than the actual products of elimination. He trained two months ago, at the age of 38 months–about standard for U.S. boys in full-time day care–with no particular fuss or trauma.
Dawn // Sep 5, 2007 at 10:24 am
Commenting on the first poster, I do not see the training pants as punishment as much as awareness that they have peed their pants. Seems to be a bit pointless to me. What is the point in letting them know AFTER they peed? It does save on laundry if they are not peeing up their clothes all day. What happened to old fashioned potty training. You take your child to the potty every 30 minutes and have them try. You watch them and when they start grabbing themselves or crossing their legs or any other type of clue, you take them to the potty. Unfortunately most parents today do not want to take the time to do these things. Sad really.
Andy // Aug 11, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I agree that training pants as punishment is a bad idea. You should reward for good behavior, not always punish for bad.
Training pants should be an achievement! A part of growing up!
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