As fathers, we love our kids. Of all of the various “rules” of life we learn on our way to becoming men, fathers and husbands, almost none of them seem to apply when it comes to the delicate task of training a small child to be potty trained. This isn’t like teaching our son to throw a curve ball or showing our daughter how to ride a bike. Quite simply, it can be one of the most trying and difficult ideas to balance the encouragement of helping your child learn potty training with the natural tendency for men to try and find fast solutions to every problem we encounter.
Potty training videos seem like a good option, helping us by providing a balanced, measured teaching style geared towards small children. Most of us are not child psychologists, and this video concept seems like a wise idea. But do potty training videos really help?
To be sure, standing in a store, looking at any video with the word “potty” in the title might not be something we ever expected we would need to do, but hey, we go the extra mile for our kids, and this is no exception. Don’t sweat it, instead, consider the fact that most of us learned to read, at least in some part, with video. Sesame Street and other children’s programming was designed to try and use the new medium (at the time) of television to communicate with kids in a more direct manner, and it worked.
This is based on the fact that children’s programming can allow adults to use animated characters or puppets to convey ideas in concepts and words that kids comprehend. Big Bird, one of the most popular characters in all of children’s television, may be bigger than any adult, but the character is written from the perspective of a preschool child. This allows children to consider the character a peer, and just as with adults, we interact on a deeper level with our peers.
But the use of video has added benefits. The show and characters can be made entertaining enough that your child will be engaged and watch multiple times. The fact that the show is discussing animated or live action children actually using the potty is only part of the story, which communicates to your child that, yes, it is a part of everyone’s life. Sing along music and lyrics can help your child remember even when the video is no longer playing, and this method is the same way that most of us learned the alphabet. In fact, for most of us, it’s hard to recite the alphabet without singing it to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, even though there is no need for us to use a song to remember the letters at this point. The use of entertaining song works much longer than we might realize.
One of the facts of life with raising children is that everyone wants to chime in with their opinion, especially when your child is young. But using a good potty training video is a good aid to your own efforts because they are written with the help of people who work with children and understand how to communicate with them. However, it’s important to remember that some videos are intended for boys while others are intended for girls, and that’s great, because it’s even more specific.
So, yes, potty training videos work. Many of them are funny (in a good way), and there’s one small caveat you should prepare for. The songs are so catchy that they will stick in your head, too, and for years, long after your child is out of diapers, you may still have the songs pop into your mind from time to time. Just try not to sing the lyrics out loud; your co-workers may change their perception of you, unless they have kids of their own. In that case, they might just laugh and join in!