Certainly a young baby cannot wander to the bathroom, sit up on the toilet, undress, wipe, redress, and
wash his hands himself. But a baby can reliably signal to someone when
the time is right for him to be assisted with all of these toilet time steps.
So, here is the new concept and definition:
Toilet Option Trained™ Definition
When communication takes place between an
individual and caretaker(s) such that the individual indicates his/her need to defecate or urinate, and waits until put on
a toilet, and then eliminates body waste; that person is successfully toilet option trained™. The toilet can be like the ones found with indoor plumbing, or it could be any other specifically designated
spot for the waste.
One element of this concept is Toilet option trained™
for defecation. Another element of this concept is Toilet option trained™
for urination. Toilet option trained™ for both defecation and urination
is another. A toilet option trained™ baby is clearly exercising control
over his own elimination process; it is not a timing coincidence. Also, there
is clearly a period that the child is waiting to eliminate after communicating. Certainly,
the length of this period has to be kept in perspective. A child first exercising
his elimination muscles cannot be expected to have as much control as an adult. As
the muscles for control are used, they will develop longer duration of deliberate control.
What about the definition of toilet option trained™
as it relates to others, not young children?
How about a 10 year old, or a 20 year old? How about someone who has the flu, or hepatitis? How about
someone who is confined to a wheel chair? How about someone who is 90 years old
and needs assistance with most everything they do? How about a person in the
hospital who needs to call the nurse to help them to the bathroom?
This new concept of toilet option trained™, as defined
here, can be tested and validated for infants, hospitalized individuals, older adults, dogs, cats, rabbits and other living
things, too. It is universal. It
is blind to all societal differences like race, religion, education level or financial status.
It can be applied at any time of day and any place. A new concept that
applies to everybody and that applies to other living things warrants consideration as being correct simply because of its
universal application.
This concept of toilet option training™ and its application
involving waste elimination is new. However, transitional stages of development
between extremes of learning capabilities are not so new. Many are familiar with
stages of acceptable options related to eating. We don’t wait for a child
to be able to express her interest in solid foods before weaning her. And
we don’t say, "No, let’s wait until you master spoon usage before we declare you ‘strained-peaches ready’
". If we did so, of course the weaning process would be much more difficult. Instead, the child already can handle the solid foods and gets assistance eating them
even as she’s learning the process of handling a spoon. That’s much easier.
When initiation of toilet training is delayed until later, when the child is older, there are complications and conflicts. When a child is older, there are many new areas of development achievements
to focus attention towards which a younger child may not be capable of learning.
But, the simultaneous learning of these more mature development achievements does not get complicated when toilet option
training™ is learned in infancy using methods like the EARLY LEARNING METHOD™. Also, since
toilet option training™ and communication happened as part of a much early
development stage, learning to be toilet-trained would
not complicate learning all these other more mature development achievements. These
other development achievements include gaining controls over several personal actions and thoughts resulting in coordination
that a child uses to independently function when recognizing his needs and deciding what to do about them, and where it takes
place, what needs to be done with his clothing, and proper hygiene in the process. These
other development achievements can be incorporated with the previous toilet option training™ already accomplished. In addition, the success from building the early communication foundation and the
other benefits can be applied to many facets of a child’s life and activities.
