Toilet training
Toilet training (or potty training) is the process of training a young child to use the toilet for urination and defecation, weaning him or her off of reliance on diapers. Potty training is usually done between the ages of 2 and 3.
According to Sigmund Freud, a child can get problems later in life if the training doesn't go well, or is too strict. As adult a person can strive for perfectness or excessive cleanliness because they were too harshly trained. The current popular wisdom on this subject is that it is a task that is always best accomplished as a mutual task, requiring cooperation and agreement and understanding between the child and the caregiver. The use of coercion and shame as disciplanary instruction tools during this phase of development are most strongly recommended against.
In some extreme cases, some caregivers have even been known to intentionally sabotage this proccess. In such unusual cases, the caregivers seem to gain some form of vicarious pleasure by intentionally inducing and inflicting shame and trauma upon the child during this proccess. Such intentional sabotage is now generally regarded as a form of child abuse and possibly a variant form of pedophilia. One of the possible outcomes of such abuse is the development of infantilism in later life.
See also
Categories: Psychology stubs