A TikToker has sparked debate after explaining why she has decided not to potty train her son until he "asks".
Mother, Alice Benderm who runs TikTok account @comingupfern, has amassed a big following thanks to the videos she shares of her 14-month-old son, Fern.
But one video she posted this week has drawn in quite a lot of attention.
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In it, Alice is asked how she is going to potty train her child, to which she replies: "We aren’t going to potty train him at all.
"When he asks how to use the toilet we’ll show him how."
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The response divided the crowds, with some belittling and questioning Alice's decision, while others defended her choice.
"Okay this one has to be a joke," said one follower.
While another penned: "Girl what".
"What if he never asks?" someone else questioned.
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But others were quick to say that they did the same.
“This is what my older sister did. Her son potty trained himself by 2.5yr because there was no pressure to do,” wrote a fellow TikToker.
“I can agree with this; we put a small toilet for him in the bathroom for whenever he was ready and one day he just magically started going himself at three years,” another penned.
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“This is what I did and my son was fully using the toilet, day and night, at 18 months. It took three days,” a third concurred.
While some parents might not be familiar with Alice's method, it's actually well known, and called “child-oriented toilet training”.
The method involves talking to children about the toilet and allowing them to instigate their first time on the loo, rather than pushing them towards it.
And while it might be scoffed at, it was actually branded one of the most successful by the American Academy of Pediatrics, in research conducted in 2003.
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The negatives are that it can take a lot longer to potty train your child using this method, and other researchers claim it unnecessarily prolongs the process.
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