More than quite other, this subject of dialogue irritates!

However everything seems simple: it is enough to teach to him say some. It is enough to put him on the pot say Oh well NOT others: cleanness does not learn! She confides and saw herself.

It is for the small child to accomplish the functioning of its own body. Not so simple!

He will be clean when he will be able to admit feeling to need to go to the saddle or to urinate.

This realisation will happen once suddenly, in the course of the second year.

While to make in 18 months?

In 18 months what does he know about his body? He sees saddles and urines, He sometimes pronounces words Excrement or wee, but he has not discovered yet that they come from him. He looks and listens to his parents, they say that it is dirty and that it does not smell nice. It is very far still of the instant of cleanness.

To put him on the pot in this age is useless and completely brought forward in comparison with this realisation. But the friends and the grandmothers tell you to put him often on the pot, so often that sometimes a saddle falls in the pot! A blow of pot all in all.

Sometimes also the child makes wee or saddles in the pot always at the same hour, they created a conditioned reflex which gives the impression that everything and earned. He is nothing.

That's how some children are described as clean from 18 months, in fact there are 5 "errors" a day and situation was dressed up. Such a frequent situation!

And why do the mothers dress situation up, by proclaiming their "clean" child while he is nothing? Simply parcequ it is unbearable to accept idea that his child is "dirty". Question of word. Question also of fixed idea.

Cleanness is the first topic of fixing of the obsessed men: we know all these "maniacs" of cleanness who do not consider any more, but follow their obsession by occupying all their time with rituals of washing Exhausting. To avoid.

Your quits baby the status of new-born baby and becomes small 18-month-old child. He wants to hear you about other one - thing than of layers. Rather birds who sing, of trees which grow, of the car which runs, from his daddy who works And all these songs which you croon to him. But of favour no saddles and of wee: irritating subject and a bit foul!

What to make then in 2 years?

Buy a chamber pot and put it in toilets. And not in the living room

The child will see him and will tell itself it is here that this takes place. As for his brothers and sisters and his parents. The place where is the pot points out the need to isolate itself in toilets. The presence of a third returns the impossible thing. It is really necessary to be alone and in security (door against or closed) to make his saddles or his urines.

Even the parents have not to invite each other in this delicate and intimate stage which takes place where the king goes alone .

Let us respect the intimacy of this 2-year-old baby. It is just in 2 years when he discovers his sexual organs, and when he seems to see where from come saddles and urines. It surprises him a bit. He is even preoccupied. Therefore more sensitive to the bad injunctions of success which could attack it.

He is at the beginning of the long promenade of the discovery of the body there. It lasts all life. No one can teach him his body. He discovers him alone.

Of course his parents put words on parts of the body and it helps a lot. Language remains the base on which experience takes a sense. But words do not replace the personal experience of the body which is not taught!

Key of the question of cleanness: Some things cannot be taught.

The best professor cannot teach cleanness, but only accessories, pot, place, whom it is necessary to call mom afterwards But the feeling which announces saddles, alone the child saw it then spots it and finally uses him at the good end.

Error to be avoided

Be obvious, take layers away by saying that layers favour laziness to Think that he can make while he is still too small. Put him in situation of failure several times a day (what a stress!), or punish him if he makes in his pants, or even to reward him if he succeeds.

Error would be to listen to the obsessed men who want to educate price in cough, while, it is not taught, as well as the gestures of love are not at all taught!

In life there are three "sacred" experiments. Cleanness, appetite and taste, sexuality. These experiments must be lived, recreate by each in a most personal and the most free way, without professor!

In 2 years language becomes clear and the child hears and includes what is said about cleanness around him. But it is necessary to this (irritating) subject of dialogue and to avoid that dialogue turns around the pot . There are so much more exciting subjects! So making, stresses and the concern of trouble to make will not come to interfere with the progressive catch of conscience.

To make saddles it is necessary to be alone "slackened" and.

Formerly they put the children lined up at the foot of their bed in the morning in some pensions or hospitals, with order to defecate! These methods used also in prison in the past are perfectly scandalous.

Some laziness

When the 2-year-old baby is left quiet, he is less anxious with pleasing his parents, less anxious. The realisation of the body can then be made calmly and at its time.

Overnight surprised! He asks you for the pot, or said Wee! before making it, and you offer the pot. Suddenly this walks and after 3 or 4 days they decide to take layers away. And everything is played. This day abandonment happens always after a stage of silence (or) during which the parents "dropped" it worries and spoke about something else. The excess of pressure inhibits the realisation and postpones the day of cleanness. Cleanness can come only from him.

It is necessary to wait 3 days of success to take layers away.

Later an "error" from time to time does not preoccupy us.

There is not laziness at the 2 and a half-year-old child who is not although capable of

Also there is no laziness at parents' who let grow their child without subjecting him to an useless pressure. Because the "educational" pressure on cleanness is always harmful and stressful because this particular topic concerns the inside of the body.

Do him peace, it is to respect his development, let him the time to mature, and to respect its body.

At the school the mistress says that if he is not clean she does not take it!

And then " my mother " said to me that I I was clean dices 2 years, while I fail? What must I make?

Just you are not master of day of acquisition of the cleanness of your child: it is just why you are admonished with perversity by reproaching you for not being it!

This defect of workmanship is unbearable for the one who thinks that everything is taught: It is possible to learn to read, to write, to put the 2 hands on the table, but they become clean!

It is abnormal that the school pretends to refuse the 3-year-old children who hesitate to become clean. When they are professor, they take the whole child such as he is, they fit to him, respecting difference, so that he enters a positive relation, basic condition any education.

Then if your 3-year-old baby has missing a discreet pullover-up in the trousers and the turn is played. Everybody in this age can have an incident. Especially, do not punish him by depriving him for his mates. Send it in maternal class as planned!

Cleanness is well a personal, intimate and delicate subject, where they will carefully avoid wanting any maitriser.

Dr Alain BROCHARD

Pediatrician in Strasbourg