Your child hits a certain magical age and suddenly visions start filling your head: You see yourself taking a short road trip without a diaper bag. You look in the closet and there seems to be two cubic feet of extra space (no diapers!). Your child suddenly looks several pounds slimmer (no diapers!). Your wallet is fatter (no diapers!).

Yes, all those wonderful things will happen, but potty training won’t occur on a particular magical date or at a certain magical age. It won't
happen overnight. It may not even take place all in one year. But it will-eventually-happen.

How and when potty training happens has become a major debate among medical professionals and parents, spurred on in part by the introduction of extra-large diapers. There is the "wait until the child is ready" school versus the more extreme "train 'em by the time they're two" school.

Parents can, to some extent, control how potty training happens, but not when. Get used to that idea right now. Your child is in charge of the when. Most children begin to show signs of readiness between twenty and thirty months of age. Wait for those signs. You'll have to use all of your willpower to control your urge to hurry your child up, but there are excellent reasons not to rush. Consider this: Just as the person on his deathbed rarely says "I wish I'd spent more time at the office," few parents with potty trained children look back and wish they’d started sooner. Most say, "We should have worried less and started later," or "I wish we'd been more relaxed about potty training." They've learned from experience that starting their child earlier doesn't mean he'll finish sooner. They'...