“My husband likes to tease me by calling my parenting style the
‘lazy parent’s method’ for raising a child,” writes one mother.
“I like to just wait for my son to move on to the next stage of
development and then follow his lead. He toilet-trained himself
when he was four because he wanted to—not because I decided it
was time.” Such a relaxed attitude toward toilet training has
grown somewhat more common in this country in recent years,
though many parents continue to report surprised reactions from
others who learn that their preschool-age children are still in
diapers. Your older child—age three and a half and up—may not be
potty-trained for a variety of reasons. You may have decided to
delay training until your child expressed an interest. You may
have attempted toilet training at an earlier time, only to give
up when you met with resistance. Your child may have been fully
trained but then regressed when a new sibling arrived or another
major change occurred, causing him never to return to his
toilet-using