Potty Training 101

Potty training can be rough. Don’t get me wrong, pre-potty training is wonderful. Post-potty training is delightful. But, right in the thick of potty training, things can get messy.

Literally.

Early potty training has worked very well for our family so far. Both Big Mac and MckNugget were trained before they turned two and Small Fry is already taking beginning courses in potty training. And, although I am no toilet expert, I am about to embark on a post devoted entirely to potty training.

Why?

a) Why not?

b) Gobzillions of you have asked me about early potty training and, this time, I’m obliging!

c) I love to read about, talk about, and blog about all things mothering.

Truth be told, I’m just a mama who has knelt beside a child on a toilet countless times already, with many more to come in the near future. I have found that, for our family, getting the training done early works well.

It works well if for no other reason than having only two babies in diapers at any given time is a powerful selling point for me. Having three in diapers might just send me careening off the Cliffs of Insanity. You know, if Small Fry’s repeated public tantrums (Read: This morning at Once Upon A Child) don’t send me there first.

Ahem.

I have broken down my potty training tips into three categories. Happy reading! And, don’t forget to wipe.

Pre-potty training:

Prior to beginning to actually train our children to use the toilet, there are a few things I do to pave the way and make training easier when it’s time.

Sit your baby directly on the toilet (Not a potty chair, but a regular toilet. And not with a small children’s seat, either. I don’t like to fuss around with stuff that takes up space and I’ll have to wean our kids off of using eventually anyway.) whenever it is convenient, usually at bathtime. I have already begun to sit Small Fry on the toilet when she’s got her britches off. This is simply to acclimate the child to the feeling of having their bare bum hovering over water while perched on a plastic seat.

I started sitting Big Mac on the toilet at about 15 months. A few months later, he was totally trained and wearing underwear at his 2nd birthday party. Here he is a month after that, enjoying a private moment that I totally intruded upon.

Shame on me.

Also, announce to your baby what they’re doing when you catch them in the act. While changing MckMuffin, if he urinates on the changing table, I’ll say even now, “Do you feel that, Sweetie? You’re urinating!”

Same thing when Small Fry squats in the corner and grunts. “Good job, Honey. You’re having a bm!” This helps to build an awareness in the child so that they know when they are doing the deed. Understanding that they are doing something is the first step towards gaining control over doing it.

Practice wearing underwear or training pants for very short periods at a time. (This is Nuggey at 18 months.)

Read books about using the toilet, watch the Once Upon A Potty book on DVD (Big Mac fuh-lipped for this video back in the day. I swear he became trained just so he could be like Joshua in the book.) and have your child watch mama, daddy or older siblings using the toilet.

Potty training:

Shortly before each of our older boys turned two years old, I started to actively pursue potty training. Both times, another baby had already arrived and I was happy to get the underwear show on the road for the oldest child in diapers.

My technique has always been to simply begin the process by letting our potty training child run around with no bottoms on.

And offer them lots of lemonade.

No, I’m not kidding. This is how we start. Every 15 minutes or so, we’ll take a bathroom break and sit on the toilet. Sometimes, nothing happens, sometimes it does. When either one of them would urinate in the toilet, we’d do a huge family happy dance and bestow a small treat or sticker upon the urinator.

And then there are times when the pants-free child will drizzle right on the floor, and in those time lay great learning opportunities. “Oh! It looks like you urinated on the floor. Let’s grab a rag and clean it up. Next time, we can try putting our urine in the toilet, okay?”

Somehow, watching themselves urinate on the bare floor would help our boys realize what they were doing, and be able to stop it the next time. Nuggey could sometimes even stop mid-stream, even at only 16 months or so, as we hustled to the toilet to finish the job.

However, if you do catch your child going on the floor, do not make a big deal out of it, raise your voice or act disappointed. What worked well for us was basically ignoring the accidents and focusing on praising the successes

And then, I repeat, repeat, repeat the above steps until the child can stay dry around the house with no diaper or underwear on. The next step is adding underwear and, somehow, that is trickier for our boys. It must remind them of the feel of a diaper and they tend to urinate in their underwear if I move them into it too quickly. That’s why I like to wait until they are basically accident free before letting them wear clothes again.

Goodness this sounds ridiculous now that I write it out.

Anyway, there are certainly times (Like at Target, when guests come over, and at a friend’s house) when nudity would not be appreciated. In those times, and when it is too cold to have a bare bum, we use training pants.

I started training a little earlier for MckNugget that I did with Big Mac and, last winter at 18 months, he already had potty training almost down pat. At that point, since it was cold out still, I often had him running around the house with no pants on, but only his Imse Vimse training pants and Baby Legs leg warmers.

Not having pants on just makes things easier and simpler when the frequent bathroom breaks come.

I use the same technique–bare bottoming it–for bowel movements, although helping a child gain control over these has been more difficult, in my experience.

Without bottoms on, our boys would almost never have a full bowl movement on the floor. Instead, I would watch them very carefully at the appropriate times (after lunch, etc.). When they would stop playing and freeze, I knew it was time. I’d prompt them each time, “Say, ‘I need to go to the bathroom!’” (and/or use the sign language sign for bathroom, if they were still pre-verbal) and whisk them off to the toilet, hopefully before they lost the urge. The first few times a child has a bowel movement in the toilet are the most scary for them, but after that, it is downhill from there.

This might be way too much information, so read on with caution, but I truly believe the super high fiber diet our MSC eat helps their bowel movements to be very soft and not want to stay put. When they need to go, they need to go, and pinching things off is very difficult. Their bowel movements are loose and fibrous and land nicely in the toilet as long as I get them there in time.

By practicing the verbage, “I need to go to the bathroom” each time you take your child, you will help teach them to say that to you ahead of time.

And by the time they are doing that–voila!–potty training is complete!

Post potty training:

Relax. Realize that accidents will happen. Carry a change of pants everywhere you go and continue to praise your child when he or she informs you ahead of time that they need to go!!

Remember that each child is different, though. Pressure potty training won’t work well, and if training ends up being too hard on either you or your child, (gently) slap a diaper back on and try again in a few months.

Oh, and don’t forget to wipe!!