how to train a child to be afraid of the potty

Potty phobia: causes of fear

1. Often a baby is potty trained when, for physiological reasons, he is not yet ready for it. The emergence of new abilities, including the retention of feces and urine, in all children depends on the maturation of certain centers in the brain. The areas of the brain responsible for defecation and urination come into force starting from 1.5-2.5 years, so requiring a one-year-old child to know how to use a potty is absolutely useless. You can catch it, use the potty as a toy, preparing the baby for a new skill, but in no case should you teach it. Untimely, intrusive teaching can lead to a child’s negative perception of this subject, which is aggravated by fears and a complete refusal to go to the potty in the future.
2. The child is afraid of the potty because it is a new object for him. This happens if the parents did not buy a potty in advance, the baby did not have time to get used to the new “friend”. And now they are trying to put him on this cold, slippery and rather scary object.
3. In kindergartens, there are common cases when teachers react inadequately to the fact that a child did not have time or forgot to go to the toilet. Emotional outcries about trouble that befell a child in front of other children can instill fear in the child’s soul not only of the potty itself, but also of the acts of defecation and urination. When placing a child in kindergarten, parents are obliged to look at what kind of toilet there is: are the potties (toilets) comfortable, is there toilet paper, can the child have privacy. The absence of these conditions almost always leads to children holding back the urge to defecate until they come home, which leads to constipation.
4. The next reason that a child is afraid of the potty directly follows from the previous one. When a child develops physiological constipation, children feel pain during bowel movements due to the fact that the feces become dense and injure the rectal mucosa. Unpleasant sensations while using the potty lead to the fact that the baby will begin to associate this object only with pain, and the child will become afraid to poop in the potty. Such constipation is already psychological.
5. Parents who try to sit their child down by the hour, deprive their children of independence and are stingy with praise, may encounter the fact that the baby will begin to be afraid to sit on the potty. When a child is punished for untidiness, shamed, his level of anxiety and fear increases. The fear of not living up to the expectations of parents with whom the child has weak emotional contact accumulates inside, finding no way out. If a child is afraid of the potty, this may be a consequence of excessive demands on him and insufficient support.
6. The source of children's fears can be their own fantasies, which often include the potty. It may seem to a child that someone is living in the toilet and will grab him by the butt, or when the water is flushed, he will be pulled into the pipe. Similar illusions in children can be associated with an ordinary children's potty. It is necessary to talk confidentially with the baby and find out what exactly he is afraid of.
7. The reason that a child is afraid to sit on the potty can be so banal that many parents do not even suspect how poorly they understand their baby. There are shy children, shy beyond their age, who at 3 years old may refuse to go to the toilet in the presence of strangers or parents of the opposite sex. In this case, it is enough to create comfortable, secluded conditions for the child and the problem will be solved.

Video: Mom scolds her little daughter

So, when you try to put a child on the potty, and he cries, screams, runs away, hides, then in such a situation it is useless to get the child to do “his business” in the potty. But there are a number of tips on how to help your child overcome his fear of the potty.

• Leave the child alone, wait until the situation is forgotten and the baby stops being afraid of the potty. This is very important, without this point everything else will not work! You must stop running after your baby with a potty. After all, it is the fixation on this problem in the family that worsens the child’s fear of the potty;
• You can buy your child a new potty (let the child choose it himself). It is very important for the baby to feel some kind of power over the situation;
• Place the purchase in the room where the child is most often located, but do not insist that the baby immediately use it for its intended purpose. Otherwise, you can provoke the child to begin to be afraid of the potty again. Let the baby get used to it and adjust the distance himself. This will relieve pressure on your part, i.e. you will not run after the little one with this question;
• You can study it, get to know it, see what it is made of, touch it, turn it over, etc. This will remove part of the fear of the unknown, that is, an incomprehensible pot;
• You need to lose this situation in games. Let the child place dolls, toys, etc. on the potty. As a result of such games, the baby will gradually perceive it as something ordinary, ordinary. And what is most important here is that the game brings positive emotions, playing out the “potty” situation brings positive emotions towards the potty;
• Instead of insisting “Anya, let’s go to the potty!”, You can take the child’s favorite toys to the potty: “Our bunny wanted to pee, let’s go with him,” etc. This technique is very similar to the previous one and actually the mechanism of action is the same here;
• Glue eyes and a smile on the pot. So an unfamiliar, impersonal object will turn into a baby’s friend;
• This technique works very well: invent, tell and act out potty-themed fairy tales with your child. The message of the fairy tale could be this: the potty is very sad to just stand idle, lonely, etc. he cries a lot when people don’t pee or poop in him.

Video: Child refused to go to the toilet to go potty

What to do if your child is afraid of the potty

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October 9, 2014 | views: 3,313

Very often, young children who have started using the potty one day begin to protest and throw tantrums as soon as the time comes to make a “pee-pee” or “ah-ah”. The parents of such kids are completely bewildered, because just recently they were proudly telling their friends that their little one had coped with such a difficult task and learned to go to the potty. So why does a child begin to be afraid of the potty? In our article we will try to find the reasons why your baby has changed his attitude towards this seemingly familiar activity, and we will also help you find a way out of the current situation.

Overzealousness

The most common reason that a child is afraid to go to the potty is the excessive desire of parents to teach their child to relieve themselves “as expected.” Having listened to numerous advisers, mothers begin to potty train their baby almost by force, which, of course, causes stress in the baby and this leads to the fact that the child begins to scream and be capricious every time he tries to sit him on the potty. Remember that it is better to put off potty training for a while than to injure the baby every time by forcing him to pee or poop. There is a time for everything, and in this way you will only ensure that your child will be afraid to go to the potty.

They just didn’t have time to “get to know each other”

Very often, a child is afraid to go to the potty because he is simply wary of any new objects. Therefore, before putting your baby on the potty, introduce him to the “future friend”, tell him what he is needed for, leave him in the most visible place so that the child can get used to the presence of the potty and stop being afraid of him. Next, you can somehow play up the moment of going to the toilet, “put some toy on the potty,” and then offer the baby to do the same. Let him just sit there without taking off his pants, since a smooth and unusual surface for the body can greatly frighten the baby, and he will stop going to the potty.

Stress due to illness

A child may be afraid to go to the potty because he has suffered a severe stomach upset or constipation and now going to the toilet is associated with unpleasant sensations. In this case, you should not put pressure on the baby, but rather wait a while, perhaps the fear will go away on its own. Another way out of this situation is to purchase a new potty, which will not be associated with the stress experienced by the baby and, perhaps, after this, he will stop being afraid. But if you realize that this child’s behavior is becoming protracted, you should still contact a specialist in the field of child psychology.

How to deal with fear?

If you notice that your child has become afraid to go to the potty, first of all, you need to find out the reason for this behavior of the baby. Talk to your baby, perhaps he himself will tell you about what scared him so much. Don’t yell at your child and try to avoid stressful situations in the family, as they can be the reason that a completely independent child suddenly begins to pee and be afraid of the potty. Never try to use force or scold your child for stopping going to the potty. By doing this you will only strengthen his negative attitude towards this process.

Do not scold your child the next time he “makes a puddle,” as this will not bring any benefit at all. Try to explain to him why this should not be done and that he should still reconsider his attitude towards the potty. Some babies need privacy, so if your child says that he cannot go to the toilet in front of you, leave him alone for a while, perhaps you mistook the child’s shyness for fear. Believe me, after you establish the cause, finding a way out of the situation will become much easier.

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Main causes of fear

In fact, if the situation with a child’s refusal to sit on the potty continues systematically and parents understand that these are not banal whims, then it is worth thinking about the child’s fear of the potty. Why such fears arise can only be understood by carefully analyzing the situation.

The main reasons for such fears include the following factors:

• Early potty training, when the baby is not yet ready to sit on it and relieve “need” in this way on a physiological level. If we consider that the area of ​​the brain that is responsible for urination and defecation and their retention matures around the age of 1.5-2.5 years, then it is absolutely futile to demand that a child know how to use a potty at an earlier age, especially consciously. The only thing that is possible at this age is to prepare the child for the upcoming new way of going to the toilet. To do this, you can use the potty as a toy, allow him to look at it, do some acceptable manipulations with it, and try to catch the baby at the moment when he wants to go to the toilet in order to sit him on the potty. The main requirement for such training is unobtrusiveness. It is the persistent behavior of parents that can cause or aggravate existing fears. In the future, this will turn into a big problem when the baby refuses to use the potty completely.
• The baby is afraid of the potty only because this object is unfamiliar to him. It often happens that the first sitting on it occurs abruptly and without prior preparation. If, on his first acquaintance with him, the baby feels how cold or slippery he is, then this may well become a cause of fear.
• Fears immediately before the acts of defecation and urination. Often, the inadequate and rude reaction of adults to the fact that the child did not have time to reach the potty becomes the main reason for the emergence of fear. In such a situation, the baby will delay the urge, which can cause constipation. This situation can also befall a child in a preschool, so parents should take care in advance to slowly introduce the child to the potty, toilet, and toilet paper at home before enrolling them in kindergarten.
• Frequent constipation in a child and painful bowel movements can cause fears about the potty. If this problem is not corrected in a timely manner, the child may develop the opinion that unpleasant or even painful sensations are associated specifically with the potty and the moment when he sits on it. In this regard, the baby may develop so-called psychological constipation, which cannot be treated with medication, but requires contacting a psychologist.
• Insufficient psychological contact between parents and their child, lack of moral support and excessive demands on a child who is still too young. When adults constantly shame a child, force him to sit on the potty for hours and do not praise him for successful attempts to relieve himself on him, this can not only cause children’s fears, but also deprive the child of independence.
• One’s own fantasies that someone might live in the toilet or potty and grab the child’s bottom while relieving himself, or that he will be washed down the sewer pipe along with the drained water, can become the reason for the emergence of children’s fears. In this situation, you need to explain to the baby why you need to flush the water into the toilet, convince him that there is no one in the potty and toilet, talking to him in a confidential and calm tone.
• Shyness also quite often becomes the reason for refusing a new toilet item, especially if the child is not allowed privacy during the act of defecation or urination. This situation can be corrected if you create comfortable conditions for the baby, where he can remain on his own while relieving himself.

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