Balancing access to bathroom with bathroom childproofing

[escher]

Our 15-month-old is letting us know that he would like some more control over his pottying, and we want to give him more options on where to potty and more of a role in dumping and cleaning his potty, flushing, etc. The question this raises for us is how to balance his increased access to the bathroom with safety. Ever since he was mobile we've kept the bathroom blocked off (he has a potty topper that he occasionally uses with our assistance, but in general he uses his BBLP in the livingroom or bedroom). Now it seems like we would like him to be able to walk into the bathroom on his own more or less whenever he wants to. Conventional child safety advice would be to put on a toilet lock (and to keep him out of the bathroom in general), but that seems like it would defeat the purpose of giving him increased access. What do other people do with young toddlers?

[flyrabbitfly]

I think it depends. If you have just one kid, and are SAHM, for us there were just no situations when I was farther than one room from him, in constant vocal or hearing contact and would hear right away, if not witness any bathroom blunders. So we never did any bathroom safety. The whole no-substitute-for-supervision thing.

On the other hand, if you have more than one kid, or aren't the sole/main caregiver, or have many things pulling your attention in different directions, it might make more sense to have only adult-supervised toilet visits.

[escher]

That makes sense. Thanks!

[seraf]

Are toilet locks for safety or ick prevention? Is the water deep enough for them to get their faces in there?

We've always had an open door bathroom policy. We keep the lid down and tp and cleaners out of reach (he LOVES toilet paper). He is old enough to lift the lid, so we do more hand washing these days (he only splashed in there once, but ick). He is my first kid to touch the water, actually.

I have never encouraged potty dumping by young toddlers and all my kids used the toilet before I thought I wanted them to carry around a sloshy potty (ick).

ETA: I couldn't find recent statistics. It looks like an average of 4 drowning deaths per year in the late 90s. 2 in 2002. I hope I'm not sticking my head in the sand on this one, but low flow toilets started replacing the big guys in the mid 90s. While it was rare before, the water level dropped with the low flow toilets, so it's not nearly as deep as it once was.

All that said, if you have a toilet seat adapter locked on the seat, can he even access the water? I didn't think my older kids could lift the seat or reach through the hole with the bjorn.
Edited by seraf - 2/19/13 at 1:38pm

[escher]

Toilet locks would be for safety. I'm not in love with the fact that he could drop things in the toilet or reach in there, but that isn't my big concern. I think the water level is deep enough that he theoretically could get his face in it, but I think it would be pretty hard for him to manage that. But I don't really know.

To be clear, he doesn't get to carry the dirty potty. He just gets to walk with us and help us dump and flush.

You had your bjorn seat reducer locked on the seat? So it just stayed there permanently? Ours hangs on the side and we just put it on when he is using the toilet.

[seraf]

We tightened it as tight as it would go and the toddlers couldn't get it off.  I don't know if they tried hard.  I thought it made a fine toilet seat when I didn't feel like lifting it off. I do tend to think kids who use the toilet are less interested in it. 

[escher]

Hi Seraf ! That's an interesting idea to tighten the seat and leave it on. Then you have to leave the lid open, I think. Maybe we'll try that. Our little guy is pretty interested in the toilet right now, since he just gained unrestricted access to it, but mostly he has been content to leave the lid closed while he plays near it.