Life

It is one of the last, most unmentionable taboos. There are not many people making a fuss about toilet training. Except for me, and that is probably because I have tried so desperately hard to be cool about it.

I have all the books. I have the leaflets, the websites, and, of course, I have the obligatory helping of peer pressure. And peer pressure there is. I have been astounded by the mothers of 18-month-olds, so confident in their progeny's continence that they regularly leave the house without a spare change of toddler clothes in their handbag. I have noticed (not noticed, actually, squirmed) at raised eyebrows accompanied by the shrilly rising: "You've not trained him yet?”

In the 17th century, children were apparently toilet-trained from birth. In the 1960s and 1970s, disposable nappies took the pressure off and there was a move towards a start somewhere between 12 and 18 months. And now the advice is: "Wait until your child is ready.” This suggests that a small light will illuminate on your child's forehead saying "now ready for training”. In any case, I have always wondered just how literally a "child's interest in the toilet” can be taken. Is it when they throw plastic ducks in it? Try to fish in it? Throw their sisters in it?

Apart from the interest, a child does need several things in order to be toilet-trained. Not only the ability to verbalise needs, and the physical ability to get up and go, but the correct neural wiring. In a baby, the emptying of the bladder occurs as a reflex reaction at the level of the spinal cord. The aim of toilet training is to get the brain wired in to override the reflex, thus producing control. When exactly this can be achieved is the debated matter. If you go and look up the medical textbooks, you will find those studies of babies toilet-trained before they were able to walk, and if you look up anthropological texts, you will hear of the Digo tribe of Africa who toilet-train their children successfully from birth. There are other studies which show that starting earlier only means that the process will take longer; that there is very little point starting before 18 months anyway, and that boys will be later to learn than girls.

Unfortunately, my medical training has left me slightly scarred. I have vague memories of lectures where I was warned that badly done toilet training would result in colossal psychological problems requiring years of psychoanalysis. The spectres were haunting me as I pondered what to do with my own son, who showed very little interest in his potty indeed.

But the good thing about being a doctor is that I have friends who give liberal advice over a gin martini. I told my child psychiatrist friend all about my otherwise normally developing boy. She replied gaily: "Don't worry about it. Your three-year-old (three-and-a-half-year-old, I added, glumly) will tell you when he is ready.”

I was very, very cool for a long time, waiting for this blessed moment. I repeated my precious mantra that a child's intelligence and the age they are toilet-trained are not even slightly related to each other. I did my research; I was startled to discover that 10 per cent of children aged three are still in nappies.

However, I was starting to feel increasingly uncomfortable especially with nurseries, despite assurances from mine that they didn't mind. Some do mind, and won't take a child untrained.

So I went and asked the child himself if he thought he was "ready”. With candid yet diplomatic ease, he informed me that although it was an interesting concept, a) he was "too busy” to go to the toilet, and b) I was very good at changing nappies. It was therefore obvious that he felt no need to change the current arrangement.

This was, to me, lesson number one: if you can possibly toilet train your child while you can still out-logic them, do, preferably before they can speak coherently at all. If the child gets logic before continence, however, don't bother using your own logic back.

The next lesson that I learned was that throwing money at the problem does not help. You can have potties in the shape of a fire engine that play Handel's Water Music right on cue, but they won't work if an ordinary one was not going to work anyway.

You can fail to find Balamory toddler pants and make your own instead, but this will be treated with bemusement (rightfully, in retrospect) by the child in question. You may try star charts, wet wipes, tears, health visitors and gin (for the mother, obviously, which I admit did help slightly).

The problem is that once you decide that you really can no longer be cool about it, you have entered a battleground. From experience, let me tell you: that battleground is a very unfair place. No matter which way you turn, you are going uphill. Your enemy is smaller than you but can run faster, and can disarm you with a carefree grin. You can never be cross for long.

In fact, you will feel terribly, terribly guilty if you ever are less than delighted about any degree of failure whatsoever. And then, after a minor success, you will believe that you have made wonderful, fabulous progress. Up until the doorbell rings, that is, and you realise you are not on the battleground but on home turf and in urgent need of carpet cleaning services.

So I forget all about toilet training. Next I remember, I'm in the supermarket, not buying nappies. I realise I have no spare Tweenie pants in my handbag, and I'm not panicking either. I'm the mother of a little boy who doesn't need me quite as much as he did, and it feels strange. All the clichés are true. They are only little once, too short a time to spend worrying, and you do have to wait until they are ready.

If only I had actually believed that to start with.