Potty training runs on readiness, not on a date in the diary

The theory of potty training is well covered elsewhere. This is about the version you meet in practice.

Readiness is physical before it is behavioural

Daytime control needs a bladder that holds a useful volume, awareness of the sensation of being full, and the ability to hold on long enough to get somewhere. Those develop on their own schedule, which is why an early start usually means a long start rather than an early finish. Useful signals include longer dry stretches, telling you after and then before, and curiosity about what everyone else does in there.

The age at which this arrives varies enormously between children, and between children in the same family.

Pick a boring fortnight

The method matters less than the consistency, and consistency is easiest when nothing else is happening. Starting the week before a house move, a new baby or a holiday is the most common avoidable mistake.

A few days at home with easy clothes and a potty in the room front-loads the accidents into a period when they are cheap. Switching back and forth between nappies and pants sends a confusing signal and stretches the whole thing out.

Accidents are the mechanism, not the failure

Feeling wet and connecting it to the sensation that came just before is how the association forms at all. A brisk, unremarkable clean-up preserves that learning, while a reaction adds anxiety, and anxious children hold on, which causes more accidents. Praise for sitting on the potty works better than praise for producing something, because sitting is the part they actually control.

Reward charts work for some children and open a negotiation with others; either way they should be small and phased out early.

Nights run on a different system

Night dryness depends on a hormone that reduces urine production overnight and on waking to a full bladder, neither of which is under conscious control. That is why a child can be reliably dry all day for a year and still need a nappy at night, with nothing having gone wrong. Bedwetting well into the school years is common enough to be unremarkable, and it is treatable, so it is worth asking rather than enduring.

Lifting a sleeping child onto the toilet has little evidence behind it and disturbs everybody.

Watch for withholding

One painful bowel movement can teach a child to hold on, which hardens the next one, which makes holding on more attractive still. Constipation is among the most common causes of both training difficulty and sudden regression, and it is routinely missed at home.

When it is going badly, soiling accidents in a child who was previously reliable frequently have constipation underneath rather than defiance. It is worth raising with a doctor or health visitor early, because it is straightforward to treat and grim to leave.

Take what is useful and ignore the rest — nobody is marking this.

Regression usually has a cause

A new sibling, starting nursery, illness or upheaval at home all commonly produce temporary loss of a skill that seemed settled. Treating it as backsliding rather than as a stress response tends to make it last longer.

Going briefly back to a simpler arrangement, without commentary, is generally the fastest route through. Regression with no obvious trigger, or one that runs on for weeks, is worth mentioning to a professional.

The takeaway

Wait for the signals, pick a dull fortnight, and treat accidents as information rather than as setbacks.

You are allowed to do the easier version tonight.