Potty

(Originally posted 5/2/2012)

I am an expert. A potty expert. I have only ever attempted to potty train one child, my son. It has been a success. Therefore, I can say that I have a 100% potty training success rate. Right?

 Okay, so maybe I’m not an expert, but I will share a little bit about our potty experience in the hopes that maybe it will help someone. If you don’t have kids, or if your kids are already potty trained, you will likely find this post boring and useless. (Unless maybe you can apply some of this to your dog. Nah, probably not.)

I had heard from a couple friends who read some potty books (I have such scholarly friends!)  that the ideal window for potty training is between 20ish months and 30ish months. Buddy just turned two, so he’s right near the middle of that window. About four or five months ago we started putting him on the potty at diaper changes and he would use it maybe one or two times a day. He seemed pretty comfortable with it, but not ready to really use it exclusively (aka, I was terrified that if I let him go diaper free he would destroy my house, what with all those hardwood floors and that $20 Walmart rug).
After hearing about this potty training window, I had an idea. Last Tuesday morning we came home from a play date and we were standing in the middle of the kitchen. Right then and there I decided it was time (I live on the edge). I took his diaper off and told him we were all done with diapers, and that he was a big boy and he would be using the potty from now on.
 
Being very paranoid, I put him on the potty about every 15 minutes for the rest of the day. I bravely put him down for nap with no diaper on. Big mistake! When he got up from his nap, there was a waterfall pouring out of the bed. The afternoon was pretty stressful. That evening, I decided I needed a plan.
 
I searched the internet for potty advice. I found a couple of places where you had to PAY to get such help. Yeah, I’m too cheap (err, frugal?) for that. I gathered everything I could find for free. I read blogs, articles, talked to friends, etc. I compiled a few tips.

• Once you go to underwear, don’t go back. Don’t use training pants, even in the car.
• Don’t even use diapers at nap and bedtime.
• It’s okay to use diapers for nap and bedtime.
• Give lots of praise.
• Don’t give too much praise.
• Give rewards.
• Don’t give rewards.
• He must be naked for 3 months.
• He must be naked for 1 day.
• He should never be naked.

Okay, so there is some conflicting advice there.  I decided we would still use diapers for nap and bed, but no other time, not even in the car or when we go in public. I don’t have any training pants, so it was pretty easy to not use them. I’m good with the praise. I didn’t use rewards because it didn’t seem necessary. He was happy to be rewarded with the opportunity to flush the toilet (what a treat!), so I didn’t feel it was necessary for us to go the sticker/candy route. As far as attire goes, I put him in a t-shirt and underwear (the cutest little boxer briefs!) with no pants. This is still his at home uniform because it’s easiest to get on and off for quick potty trips. He wears pants in public. The boxer briefs aren’t THAT cute.

Nothing will get a mommy to jump up from her cup of coffee and bag of chocolate chips like her undiapered two year old shouting “pee pee in potty!!” He learned that fast. Not that he needed to go, but he just enjoyed seeing me run to him (note to self, pay attention to him other times too). He very quickly turned this into a game of bedtime shenanigans. The new rule is, after bedtime, the potty is available on request, but there will be no stories, songs, or toys.

Days 2 – 4 brought many tantrums about the potty and a lot of exhaustion for this mommy. On Saturday night I just about had a breakdown. I was ready to throw it all out and just go back to diapers and give up on the whole thing. I was starting to feel like we had made no progress (he was having about 4 accidents a day). I was feeling like we would never be able to leave the house again. I thought that maybe we had started too early and we should try again in a couple of months (or years?!).

Thanks to the support of my (awesome) husband and some (fabulous) friends, I stuck with it through Sunday. MAJOR progress! And it’s all been downhill since then. (Or uphill? Which one means it’s been good? Well, whatever, it’s been good!)  We’ve even had two successful, accident free trips into public.

On Monday we spent a few hours at a local playground. It doesn’t even have a bathroom! On the advice of others, I brought his little potty with us. I set it up on a towel in the back of my car (love that minivan). He used it twice while we were there. (Side note – I also brought a plastic bag to wrap it in, should there be a poop event – there wasn’t. And I put a jug of water in the car should I need to do any cleaning.) He thought it was pretty funny to have a potty in the car.

I am still prompting him on a regular basis to use the potty. Sometimes he asks on his own. He frequently wakes up from naps/bed dry, but I’m a little bit afraid to go all in after seeing the waterfall that he can create in his sleep. Soon enough…

Oh, and I was just kidding about that whole “expert” thing. I have no clue what I’m doing. As I said, I went into this (stupidly) with no plan. Glad it worked though! Phew! And while this post is not written by an expert, it is free, so that's a bonus!

And on a separate note… I am surprisingly a little bit saddened by all of this. He is really becoming a big boy now. He’s not a baby. He doesn’t wear cute cloth diapers anymore (less laundry for me!!). I can’t dress him and his brother in matching diapers and let them play outside and take a million pictures (which is exactly how I was picturing my summer). Oh well, time to move on. It’s all happening so fast.