Potty training
Everyone has an opinion and most of them contradict each other. Here is what the NHS actually says, including the bit that has quietly changed — and the reason your child may be dry at nursery but not at home.
In short
- Almost all children can be potty trained between 18 months and two and a half.
- Do not wait for the perfect moment. The NHS now says explicitly that waiting for it can mean putting this off far longer than you need to.
- Pants during the day, not pull-ups — children need to feel wet to make the connection.
- Accidents are part of learning, not evidence it is going wrong. Stay calm, clean up together, move on.
- Praise and stickers, never telling off. Shame slows this down more than anything else.
- Night-time is a separate job, years later. Usually about a year after daytime, so often around 4.
- Do not start in the middle of upheaval — a new baby, a house move, or starting nursery.
When to start — and the advice that changed
The NHS position is that almost all children can be potty trained between 18 months and two and a half years old.
What is worth knowing is that the emphasis has shifted. The older, widely repeated advice was to watch for readiness signs and wait until they all appeared. Current NHS guidance is more direct: you do not need to wait for your child to ask or to show every sign, because waiting for the perfect time can mean putting it off for longer than you need to.
Why this matters
“Wait until they’re ready” is deeply embedded, and it is kindly meant. But for a lot of families it turns into waiting indefinitely, and then a scramble the summer before school. The signs below are genuinely useful as a guide. They are not a set of locks that all have to click before you are allowed to begin.
The readiness signs
These tell you a child is likely to find it easier:
- They notice when they are doing a wee or a poo, or realise they need to go
- They can sit down on a potty or toilet and get back up again on their own
- They stay dry for one to two hours or longer
- They can follow a simple instruction and tell you what they want
- They are interested in what other people do in the bathroom — a nuisance, but a genuinely good sign
When not to start
Timing matters more than technique. Pick a stretch when life is fairly calm and there are not too many changes at once.
Postpone if
- A new baby has just arrived, or is about to
- You are moving house
- They are starting nursery or changing setting
- Anyone in the house is seriously unwell, or the family is going through something hard
- You are about to go away, and consistency will be impossible for a fortnight
Toilet training is one of the first things a child controls entirely for themselves. When everything else feels unstable, it is a very natural thing to hold onto.
The five steps
Talk about it for a few days beforehand. Let them pick the pants. Read a book about it. Nobody enjoys a change that arrives without warning.
Not pull-ups. The entire mechanism is your child noticing the difference between wet and dry, and modern nappies are extremely good at hiding it.
After meals, before bed, before you go out. Regular and unremarkable beats asking “do you need a wee?” forty times a day, which quickly becomes a battle.
Clap, tell them you are proud, use a sticker chart if it suits them. Sitting on the potty when nothing happens still deserves the praise — that is the habit you are building.
Wiping, pulling clothes up, flushing, washing hands. Slow and imperfect is fine. This is the part that matters at nursery and later at school, where nobody will do it for them.
Accidents and setbacks
There will be accidents. Not a few — a lot, for a while. They are a normal part of learning rather than a sign the whole thing was premature.
NHS advice on this is short and worth following exactly: try not to get angry or upset. Stay calm, clean up together, and move on.
Do
- Keep spare clothes everywhere — bag, car, setting
- Say “never mind, let’s get you dry” and mean it
- Let them help clean up, matter-of-factly
- Expect regression after illness, holidays or a new sibling
Don’t
- Tell them off, or show that you are disappointed
- Ask “why didn’t you tell me?” — they do not know
- Put them back in nappies at the first bad day
- Compare them to a sibling or anyone at nursery
If it is genuinely going nowhere after a couple of weeks and everyone is miserable, it is fine to stop, go back to nappies without fuss, and try again in a few weeks. That is not failure. It is information.
Night-time is a different job
Daytime and night-time dryness are not the same skill, and night is largely outside a child’s control — it depends on a hormone and on bladder capacity, neither of which responds to encouragement.
- Get daytime working first. Do not try to do both at once.
- The sign to look for is a nappy that is dry, or only slightly damp, several mornings in a row.
- Expect roughly a year’s gap. Children are typically out of nappies in the day for about a year before they are reliably dry at night — so often around age 4.
- Bedwetting well beyond that is common and is not naughtiness or laziness.
Keeping it consistent with your setting
This is where a lot of potty training quietly stalls, and it is rarely anyone’s fault. A child can be dry at nursery and having accidents at home, or the reverse, simply because the two places are doing different things.
Tell your childminder or nursery before you start, not after the first accident. Agree the specifics:
- Pants or pull-ups — and stick to the same in both places
- The same words. Wee, poo, toilet, potty. Children are literal, and a different vocabulary in each place is a real obstacle
- When the regular sits happen, so the rhythm matches
- How accidents are handled, so the reaction is the same wherever it happens
- How much spare clothing they want you to send — it will be more than you think
From the childminder’s side
A setting cannot refuse to take a child because they are not toilet trained, and a good one will be glad you started. What genuinely helps them is knowing what you are doing at home and having enough spare clothes. What does not help is starting on a Monday and not mentioning it.
When to get help
Speak to your health visitor or GP if:
- Your child seems constipated — hard or painful poos, or holding on and avoiding going
- Progress seems delayed, or has stopped entirely for a long stretch
- You would like support before they start school
- Your child has additional needs and you want an approach built around them
Constipation is worth taking seriously early.
It is one of the most common reasons potty training stalls, and it becomes self-reinforcing — going hurts, so a child holds on, which makes it worse. It is very treatable, and it is much easier to sort early than after months. If poos are hard, painful or infrequent, ask rather than waiting it out.
Where to go next
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