PARENTING DAILY INSIDER
My daughter was fully trained at 22 months.
My friends thought I was mad. Then they started asking me how.
"Everyone told me to wait until she was ready. What nobody told me was that the window for easy training closes earlier than you think — and most parents miss it entirely."
She was 18 months when we started. Everyone said we were too early. We weren't.
My second daughter was 22 months old when she stopped wearing nappies entirely.
Not diapers. Not "mostly trained." Done. Using the toilet independently, telling us when she needed to go, staying dry through naps.
My friends with kids the same age were still deep in it — accidents, resistance, the whole thing. They kept asking me what I'd done differently.
Honestly? I'd done less than them. I'd just started earlier.
I'm not saying this to be smug. I'm saying it because I nearly missed it myself. With my first child I waited until she was nearly three, like everyone said to. It took months. It was hard. She resisted. I assumed that was just how potty training worked.
With my second, I started at 18 months. She was trained by 22 months. It was genuinely one of the easier things we've done as parents.
The difference wasn't my daughter. The difference was timing — and one thing I did differently that made the whole process actually work.
Why "wait until they're ready" is advice that backfires
The standard advice is to look for "readiness signs" — staying dry for two hours, showing interest in the toilet, telling you after they've gone. Most paediatricians say to wait until 2.5 or even 3.
Here's the problem with that. By 2.5 to 3, children have spent two years learning that nappies handle everything for them. The habit is deeply set. The brain has learned to ignore the signals entirely.
And there's something else nobody talks about: the body awareness window.
Between roughly 12 and 24 months, children are naturally developing interoception — the ability to notice internal body signals. This is the same developmental stage when they start recognising hunger, tiredness, and discomfort.
This is also the window when the brain most easily builds the connection between the sensation of needing to go and the action of responding to it. Training during this window is faster, easier, and sticks better — because you're working with the brain's natural development, not against a habit that's already formed.
After 2.5, that window hasn't closed — but it's narrower, and the habit of ignoring the signal is already in place. That's why training gets harder the longer you wait, not easier.
When I understood this, I stopped waiting. My daughter was 18 months. She wasn't showing the "classic" readiness signs. But she was in the window — and that turned out to be what mattered.
The one thing that made early training actually work
I'd tried introducing the potty with my first daughter at around 18 months too. It went nowhere. She had no interest, no awareness, and we gave up and went back to nappies.
With my second, I did one thing differently. I switched her out of disposables and into training pants during the day.
That's it. That was the change.
Training pants are different. They hold enough to contain an accident, but the child still feels the wetness against their skin. That sensation is the feedback loop the brain needs to build awareness.
Within a few days of switching, I noticed my daughter starting to react when she had an accident — looking down, seeming surprised, starting to make the connection. With disposables, that never happened. She just carried on as if nothing had occurred.
The potty wasn't the key. The pants were.
Week by week — what I actually saw
She was 18 months when we started. Here's how it went.
Week four. She walked to the potty on her own. I hadn't asked her to.
The simple version
Early training works because you're building a habit before a competing habit forms.
Every month a child spends in disposables is a month their brain learns to ignore the signal. By 2.5 or 3, that's two-plus years of learned ignoring. You're not teaching something new — you're trying to undo something old.
Start earlier, with training pants that restore the feedback loop, and the brain builds the connection naturally. There's no resistance because there's no competing habit to fight.
Most parents focus on the potty — the timing, the routine, the reward chart. But the potty is just a destination. The pants are what build the awareness that makes a child want to use it.
UpAiry training pants are designed specifically for this. They hold wetness against the skin — enough to feel, contained enough not to make a mess — so the feedback loop stays intact. That's the mechanism. Everything else follows from it.
I'm not saying every child will train at 22 months. Every child is different. But starting the process earlier, with the right tool, gives the brain the best possible chance to build the connection before the window narrows.
With my first child, I waited. With my second, I started. The difference was night and day.
They started early too. Here's what happened.
From UpAiry reviews — parents who started before 2 and were surprised by how quickly it worked.
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