In a candid reflection on her own past counsel, parenting expert Janet Lansbury has publicly acknowledged providing advice on toilet training that, in retrospect, proved unhelpful to a particular family. This admission comes after a parent, who had sought Lansbury’s guidance a year prior on her daughter’s protracted toilet training journey, shared a significant update: the successful resolution of a four-year struggle was achieved not by following Lansbury’s recommendations, but by adopting a decidedly different approach. The parent’s update prompted Lansbury to revisit her previous advice, offering a detailed analysis of why her methodology may have been misapplied in this instance, and highlighting the critical importance of parental instinct in guiding child-rearing decisions.
The Original Dilemma: A Child’s Resistance to Potty Training
The initial consultation, detailed in a previous "Unruffled" episode titled "When Kids Don’t Seem Motivated (to Potty, Crawl, or Create)," featured a parent grappling with her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter’s seemingly unwavering resistance to toilet training. Despite exhibiting signs of physical, cognitive, and verbal readiness for over a year and a half, the child remained firmly entrenched in diapers, expressing a desire to remain in them "forever." The parent described a four-year-long saga that had reached a stalemate, characterized by the child’s intense aversion to the potty and any discussion surrounding it.
The parent’s dilemma was rooted in a perceived conflict between Lansbury’s advocated "child-led" approach and her own observations of her daughter’s fearful and avoidant nature. While Lansbury typically champions allowing children to lead developmental milestones, believing in their inherent motivation and capacity for autonomous achievement, this parent found herself questioning whether a strictly child-led path would ever yield results for her daughter. She described her daughter as a "fearful and avoidant kid" who, in other contexts, required parental guidance to navigate new experiences. In these instances, the parent and her husband would acknowledge and validate their daughter’s emotions but would gently encourage her to proceed, a strategy that often resulted in the child enjoying the new activity. This consistent parental intervention, she argued, was essential for her daughter’s engagement with the world.
The parent expressed a profound disconnect between her daughter’s overall capability and her persistent reliance on diapers. She felt that continuing to wait for her daughter to initiate toilet training was enabling a phobia and hindering her development, especially as many of her peers were already successfully toilet trained. Her concern was that her daughter, a typically developing yet highly sensitive and strong-willed child, was being held back by an issue that felt out of sync with her other developmental achievements.
Lansbury’s Initial Advice: Trust, Boundaries, and Emotional Validation
In the original podcast episode, Lansbury outlined a three-pronged approach for parents facing similar motivational challenges in their children:
- Trust: Lansbury emphasized the importance of genuine trust in a child’s natural abilities, inner direction, and innate motivation to learn and acquire skills. This also involved providing ample opportunities for practice.
- Reasonable Boundaries: She suggested that a lack of clear, albeit reasonable, boundaries could sometimes be an impediment when a child appears "stuck."
- Welcoming Feelings: A cornerstone of Lansbury’s philosophy is the acceptance of children’s uncomfortable emotions, including frustration, uncertainty, and fear. She posited that parental discomfort with these feelings can inadvertently hinder a child’s progress.
Applying these principles to the parent’s situation, Lansbury’s initial feedback, as recalled in the recent episode, suggested that the child’s strong declarations about remaining in diapers indicated a pushback against a perceived parental agenda. Lansbury theorized that mixed messaging from the parents—a combination of expressing trust while subtly conveying a desire for the child to toilet train—could be contributing to the child’s anxiety and resistance. She recommended that the parents make a clear, decisive choice and commit fully to one approach. Her preference, she stated, was for a "full-on trust direction," believing that external factors like peers using the potty would eventually facilitate the process. She advised the parent to remove herself from the equation, trust her child’s innate ability, and allow the child’s own process to unfold, even if it involved continued play with stuffed animals around the topic, which she saw as a sign of the child working through her anxieties.
Lansbury also touched upon the concept of "Velcro children"—those who exhibit a strong need for physical closeness—and suggested that this behavior, along with a parent’s discomfort with separation (such as allowing privacy in the bathroom), could also create mixed messaging and hinder a child’s progress. She encouraged the parent to establish clearer boundaries around separation, framing it not as accommodating fear, but as allowing the child to express and process her feelings about letting go.
The Parent’s Update: A Shift in Approach and Unexpected Success
Approximately a year after the initial consultation, the parent provided Lansbury with an update that challenged the efficacy of the advice given. Despite her best efforts to implement Lansbury’s suggestions, there was no discernible shift in her daughter’s resistance to the potty. The parent stated, "Still, there was no movement toward interest in the potty on her part, despite all her same-aged friends doing it. No loosening of resistance, not even an inch."
As her daughter approached her fourth birthday, the parent, unwilling to have a child without developmental disabilities in diapers, made a firm decision: four years old would be the limit. This marked a significant departure from the child-led approach. "There was simply going to be no choice anymore," she recounted. The initial days were described as "grueling," with intense fear and resistance from her daughter. However, after a period of pushing through, they "broke through." The outcome was remarkable: the daughter had not had an accident in a week and was now willingly using the toilet.
The parent expressed a sense of regret for not having trusted her own initial instincts earlier. She articulated a revised understanding of her daughter’s situation: "What I saw was a scared kid who needed help doing something she was fully capable of. She was stuck and needed us to see through that." Her experience led her to question whether toilet training should always be viewed as an inherently developmental milestone that children naturally achieve when ready. For her daughter, she believed it was more akin to overcoming a phobia, requiring a "strong and firm push," comparable to getting vaccinated rather than learning to walk.
She concluded that what ultimately worked was "having a hundred percent certainty that it was time despite no interest on her part and that she could do it, but we needed to force the issue." This firm stance, she noted, resulted in her daughter’s pride and a sense of acting her age in other aspects as well.
Lansbury’s Re-evaluation: The Nuances of Parental Instinct and Belief Systems
Receiving this update prompted Lansbury to re-examine her original advice and acknowledge its limitations. She expressed genuine happiness for the parent’s success and relief, but also a degree of regret for potentially leading the parent away from her own instincts.
Lansbury’s analysis revealed a critical flaw in her previous counsel. While she had advised the parent to "make a clear choice one way or the other," her subsequent emphasis on "full-on trust" direction inadvertently steered the parent away from her own deeply held beliefs and observations. Lansbury admitted, "I feel bad that then I recommended her to trust her child. Because… I feel bad that then I recommended her to trust her child. Because, as I said in the beginning of this episode today, I believe that’s preferable if we can do it."
She explained that her own strong belief in child-led development, while generally beneficial, did not align with this particular parent’s fundamental feelings and observations. The parent’s instinct was that her daughter was not simply unmotivated but was, in fact, fearful and required a guiding hand to overcome a specific challenge. Lansbury recognized that pushing a belief system the parent did not inherently hold was unlikely to be effective. The parent’s underlying doubts, despite her efforts to convey trust, likely created the "mixed messaging" Lansbury had identified, but in a way that stemmed from the parent’s own internal conflict rather than a deliberate agenda.
Lansbury highlighted the parent’s self-description as an "anxious overthinker" and how this temperament can transmit anxiety to a child, creating a cyclical dynamic. The parent’s eventual success, Lansbury suggested, came from her embracing her own conviction that her daughter could and needed to move beyond diapers, a conviction that was not fostered by Lansbury’s advice to trust the child’s pace.
Broader Implications for Parenting Advice
This situation underscores a fundamental principle in parenting: the paramount importance of a parent’s own instincts and deeply held beliefs. Lansbury concluded that while expert advice can be valuable, it must resonate with a parent’s inner sense of what is right for their child. If advice feels forced or disconnected from a parent’s core convictions, it is unlikely to be successful and can even create the very "mixed messaging" that hinders a child’s progress.
"Whatever parenting advice you’re getting from anywhere, it’s got to resonate with your instincts," Lansbury stated. She emphasized that children are attuned to their parents’ authenticity. When parents try to implement advice that doesn’t align with their own feelings, it can manifest as a lack of genuine conviction, which the child perceives.
The case serves as a powerful reminder that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to parenting. While Lansbury’s philosophy of child-led development has proven effective for many, it is not universally applicable. The parent’s willingness to trust her own judgment, even when it conflicted with expert advice, ultimately led to a successful outcome for her daughter. This highlights the dynamic interplay between parental intuition, expert guidance, and the unique needs of each child, underscoring that a parent’s "hundred percent certainty," when rooted in genuine belief, is a potent force in guiding a child’s development. Lansbury’s willingness to reflect on her own advice and learn from this experience demonstrates a commitment to evolving her understanding and empowering parents to trust their own inner compass.