My plan with day time potty training was to use the 3 day method. Basically you wait till the child is ready and showing interest. Then you plan a period of at least a week where you will be at home and not going out. You start by keeping the child naked from the waist down. When they go, you give them the words for what has happened and sit them on the toilet. You watch closely and will start to see signs that they will go soon. You keep setting them on the toilet and soon they have success. This is cause for a big celebration! You keep doing this every day until the child goes 3 days without any accidents. Then you put them in underwear. Most will have an accident in underwear because they think they are wearing a diaper. Once they make it 3 days without an underwear accident, you can add pants. After 3 days in pants with no accidents, you are ready to go out in public. I have seen this method work with most children. There is no shame in having an accident, no punishment for getting wet. You don't reward with food, stickers, etc.
Merry Christmas!
You know what they say about plans, right? At 14 months old my daughter told me she wanted to sit on the potty. I laughed, but decided to let her. I took off her diaper and sat her down and she went. We danced and sang and celebrated the success. Then I put her diaper back on because surely this was a fluke, right? She never went in the diaper when awake for 2 weeks. So we tried underwear. She continued to stay dry. I sent her to the Mother's Day Out in underwear. She stayed dry - they were amazed. The only hitch? She wouldn't go for my husband. Then I got sick and my husband had to take care of the kids. He put her back in a diaper and she regressed.She would still tell us when she needed to go and would often stay dry all day long, but she was back in a diaper.
Bags filled with toys!
During this time my son loved the celebration part, but wanted little to do with the toilet. We had small potty chairs and he wanted to wear them as a hat. While teaching her to use the toilet, we were teaching him not to wear it. He had no interest in sitting on it or in taking off his diaper.
How did she get in there?
I decided to try potty training again over the Summer. We talked about it daily. We looked at the calendar and marked the day we wouldn't use diapers during the day anymore. As expected, my daughter did great. She was immediately on board. My son wasn't as convinced and we had many more accidents. Still within a month he was down to only one accident a week. They both were very adamant that they would use the toilet and not the potty chairs. This meant less work for us, but that only one child could go at a time. Not ideal for potty training, but this way we didn't have to later transition them off of it. We did use the plastic underwear over the regular underwear when we were in the car to help contain if they did have an accident. We ordered it online because the stores don't carry the plastic underwear in small enough sizes.
Sitting on our potties
(if you are looking closely, that is his thumb, no privates show in the photo)
They were both potty trained before turning 2 and everyone wants to know the secret. Um... She wanted to do it and when we started with him he wanted to sit on the toilet like she did. There was no magic trick, nothing to really pass on as far as advice. We are incredibly lucky and appreciate it every day.
So much for a wagon ride.
Night time potty training is a much different process. Typically you should wait until a child is staying dry most nights when they are asleep before starting. This is a very developmental process and can't be rushed by parents who just want to be finished with diapers.
I was talking about this with my mother-in-law (I don't actually remember why), and she said her kids were potty trained by about 1 year. She just didn't put a diaper on them and they peed on themselves once and never wanted to repeat that so they used the toilet from then on. (I didn't ask about night-time diapers.)
ReplyDeleteWe did try to potty train my son when she started, but he really had no interest. He didn't want to sit on the potty and he had no issue with peeing (or other stuff) on the floor while he was playing. Gave up on that immediately and waited until he was interested.
ReplyDeleteI know a lot of people use Elimination Communication and have their child out of diapers well before 1. In fact, this is standard in most other countries. I was not this committed and too overwhelmed to follow the method though!