I’m not saying I know everything.
I’m not even saying I know anything.
But I do have three little kids and I have been in one stage of potty training or another for the past 4 years.
4 YEARS people.
4 years is a long time to spend teaching little firefighters to aim their water hoses.
I’ve learned some stuff. So far, this is what I know:
- People will tell you to do it in the summer. I call B.S. on this one. I do not enjoy having naked kids running around my house peeing on my furniture. Also, we occasionally have to go out in public, where being naked and peeing wherever you want is frowned upon. Do it in the winter when they can wear fleece sweat pants and have fleece sheets on the bed. Those are the most absorbent. Just trust me.
- Do you have a girl? Keep a funnel and an empty water bottle in your car. I bought a yellow funnel at IKEA so that I wouldn’t confuse it with any of the regular kitchen funnels. If you have a boy you can skip the funnel and just carry an empty bottle.
- You’re going to want to buy new towels. Remember the fancy extra fluffy towels you got as a wedding gift? Those are your new go-to pee pee mopper-uppers. Cheap towels aren’t cut out for the task.
- Just wait. Yeah, sure Johnny’s mommy says that he is 100% trained at 18 months, even at night, but what she isn’t telling you is that she sets an alarm and wakes him up 4 times every night to sit on the potty. Unless you want to be constantly dealing with accidents in public or waking up to change wet sheets 3 or 4 times a night, just wait a few more months. One of my kids was 4 years old before being 100% ready, including being night trained. It will happen eventually. I have not sent a kid to kindergarten in diapers yet.
- Don’t buy a new couch until all of your kids are potty trained. I learned this the hard way. We’re all starting to see the true genius behind Grandma’s plastic wrapped furniture now, aren’t we?
- Get the cheap seat that fits on top of the regular toilet. “But the little Lightening McQueen that sings when it senses it is being filled is adorable and I can keep it in any room in the house,” you say. It won’t be at all cute after the first time you have to clean poop out of it with your bare hands or when your little angel wants to “help” clean out the potty by dumping its contents on your carpet. Or if someone didn’t tell you they went and left the contents in the potty to later be discovered and used by a younger sibling as finger paint and/or food. Just sayin.’ Yes, it happens.
Ok veteran mommies, what else have you learned?
I saw this on Pinterest and clicked on it because we are in this stage for like a year with my oldest. I wish I would have read it a year ago because now I’ve made like half of the mistakes! I am totally getting rid of the “little potty” before child #2 gets to this stage.
oh, Kelly. I feel for you, honey!
My little guy is 3 and totally not ready. I know people say they should be fully trained by now, but I’m not forcing the issue. He’ll be ready when he’s ready. Great tips here. I am SO not looking forward to accidents. What if the baby gets to it before I do? Ugh.
Don’t worry. He will get there before kindergarten, I promise. đŸ™‚
Nice post! There’s currently a discussion about potty training on our FB page, so I’m so glad I just happened across this on Pinterest. I’m going to share the link to this post in the discussion thread. Thank you for pointing out a truth about training at 18 months. Word!
And I have a bit of medical wisdom: a child can have full neuromuscular control of their bowels when then can change direction quickly (without falling down) while running. Ellen
Thank you for sharing my post as part of your discussion! That is such a cool fact about changing direction while running!
I happened across this post on Pinterest as well. I am working on potty training my 21 month old daughter right now and it is tough. I decided to get to it since she was showing signs of readiness and I am due to have a baby this summer. I started with The Three Day Potty Training Method. Day one was crazy… Day two got better by the end of the day and day three we did good. I discovered that orange juice is bad after potty training because she can’t seem to control her bladder at all while drinking it. So I have nixed that… Most of the time she can tell me before she has to go to the potty. Day 4 of potty training went really well but I hadn’t taken her out of the house yet. Day 5 we went out for breakfast … She kept telling me she had to go and I had showed her to bathroom but every time I took her and Esther down she wouldn’t go. She had one accident in the restaurant and one in the store on the way home. I had taken her little portable potty with us and after these one accident she pooped and peed i the little toilet. Day 7 we hada great morning and I decided to try to take her to my stroller x class at the gym…. Took her to use the potty and she wouldn’t go. Got to class and started working out and I could tell she had to go but I couldn’t get herto the potty in time. Sat her down when we got there and she wouldn’t go any more… In the next 20 minutes we walked back and forth she kept telling me she needed to go. However, she would never pee in the potty. Finally, I decided we were going home. She told me she had to go again and stood and peed in her pants. Out of clothes and only 35 min into our outing…
I am trying to be positive but we do travel a lot and in two weeks we need to be doing a lot better!
Any suggestions?
Hi Mary Rose. 21 months is VERY young. I know that’s probably not want you want to hear, but my advice would be to wait a little longer. Just the fact that she already knows when she needs to go is really impressive!
Our life saver was the toilet seat that has a child sized one in it. We have the oblong toilets so the cute little seats would slide around on our toilets and it scared our son because he couldn’t hold on with both hands. We finally found one that fit our toilet at Lowes for about 20 bucks!
We ordered an actual toilet in kids’ size from Amazon. It is just like they use in daycares/schools. American Standard brand and everything. The beauty is that I don’t have to mess with the portable one AND the kids can reach it. This means in the middle of the night they go in and can get on and off by themselves. I get to sleep through it, though they do usually come in and proudly announce the grand news, but I can mumble a quick, “Yeah, so proud of you” and roll over back to sleep. Best investment ever and it barely cost more than a standard toilet.