Habitual Toilet Training

Toilet training is one of the biggest steps in a parent and child’s life. Having said that it should also be a fun experience for your child and you. Habitual training is another part of the toileting.

Habitual training is done to create the habit of going to the toilet and sitting on the potty. This can only be done once a child can tolerate going to the toilet. During this time you are just creating the habit only but there is no pressure for the child to urinate.

Introduce this habit to your child by reading to him/her a social story on going to the toilet. 

For example:

Title	Going to the toilet
Page 1	This is Jane
Page 2	Jane goes to toilet to pee pee
Page 3	Jane can take panty off
Page 4	Jane sits on potty
Page 5	Jane pees in potty…..hooray Jane gets surprise
Page 6	Wow Jane pee in the potty…..AWESOME
Page 7	Mummy and Daddy are so happy….Jane pee in potty

*Insert pictures for the social story. It is best to use the real pictures of the person or items.

Start off by taking the child to the toilet every 30 minutes. When at the toilet have the child to sit on the potty for at least 20 – 30 seconds. If your child needs a baby toilet seat you might want to have that prepared. Be sure to prepare a specific reinforcer to reward you child if he/she can sit on the potty without any fuss. You might also want to prepare a “super special” reinforcer to reward your child in case if you catch him/her urinating in the toilet.

While doing this it is important to keep track of time and if your child’s diaper is dry or soil. Below is an example of datasheet you can easily create.

Time intervals(eg 30 mins)	Specific time	Success on toilet (urinate/no urinate in toilet)	Diaper – wet/dry	Comments
Eg: 30 mins	8:30am	No urinate	Dry	Sat nicely

By having a data sheet it can be a reminder for you to take your child to toilet and also in a way to track what time your child is urinating by looking at the “success on toilet” column or “diaper” column.

If your child starts to urinate in the toilet ( for instance your child urinates in the toilet at least 3 times in a row when you took him/her) increase the time intervals to 1 hour. In order to encourage your child to urinate give him/her lots of water and salty food.

Habitual training should at least be done for a month consistently to see some results. If your child is not successful after a month, then it is time to try out “The Big Day” for toilet training.

Check out our next article on “The Big Day”

Written by

Jessica Ganesha

Consultant, EAP Malaysia