Potty Training Woes

Potty Training Woes

I was planning on writing this post a couple of weeks ago, but I just never got around to it. With three kids I have done my fair share of potty training. Not that I consider myself an expert my any means. I mostly got lucky.  But I did a couple of things to help entice my kids along the way which I would like to share.

I think it has a lot to do with timing. Kids are ready at certain times to be trained. I don't think there is a specific right time for anyone in particular. You just need to see when you think they actively know they are about to go to the bathroom in their diaper. I have a friend who has successfully trained her kids almost since their birth. She always put her little girl on the potty even when she was a couple of months old. And it worked for her. Yes she still put her in diapers but she got her used to the potty early. I know someone else whose son was in pre-k last year (over 4 years old) who wasn't quite trained yet. One tip I have is to be relaxed about it. The truth is you don't see any kids in kindergarten who aren't potty trained. So you need to know that your son/daughter will get it...eventually.

For Rebecca, it was all luck and a little bit of her personality that helped this along. She had been afraid of the potty for so long. We had a small one that we used to sit in the family room. We would have her sit on it when she turned 2.  We would read to her. We would bribe her.  We would do anything, but she wasn't having it.  She didn't like the potty and wouldn't go. Of course she was my first child so I wasn't exactly sure what to do. My head was telling me to leave her alone but I had about 50 people giving me their unsolicited advice about how to handle this. But in the end I let her alone. This is where I lucked out. When she was in pre-school her AWESOME teachers would bring each child to the potty every day. They had no idea Rebecca was afraid of it. Almost all the time (and this is still true), she is a pleaser by nature. She won't ever speak up/back to a teacher. So she went on the potty at school every day for a month, which was really only twice a week. Then one day, her teacher told me what a good job she was doing. Imagine my surprise since she NEVER went potty at home. On the way home from school, I asked her about it and pulled right into the Target parking lot. We picked out some new panties that I told her she could wear as soon as she was ready. The very next morning she asked to wear them.  We never looked back. Sure she had a couple of accidents. But probably less than 5 over the next couple of months. By her 3rd birthday she was completely night time trained as well.

I used to joke around that when it came time to train Tyler I wouldn't know what to do because Rebecca was so easy. So I started off the same way. I just tried to make him comfortable on the potty.  We would let him sit on it at bath time and in the morning. He would pee and poop on the potty with no trouble. He wasn't afraid. His preschool teachers actually did a potty dance in their class when someone was dry and needed to use the bathroom. And Tyler LOVED it. He would do awesome for them at school. So one day after he turned 3, I took him to buy his underwear. He picked it out and the next day wanted to wear it. But all day, he had accident after accident. If I took him to the potty, he was fine. If I didn't, it wasn't good. I started setting the timer on my watch when we were out or microwave when we were home. It went off every ten minutes so I could remind him to use the bathroom. When he was staying dry I increased the time by 5 minute increments. I am sorry to say it didn't work. So I bought candy. Every time he was dry in between potty breaks, I would give him a jelly bean. He got one for pee and two for poop. We put up a sticker chart in the bathroom. He would get a sticker when he was dry. Finally after one LONG and FRUSTRATING month at it, I decided to take a break. He wasn't ready. I couldn't handle it any longer. I was tired of it...the laundry, the cleaning...all of it.

So I set a goal. I would start back with the push when we came home from our beach vacation over the summer. It would give me about 6 weeks to have him trained before school started. When we got back, I started over. I even used a potty watch for him. It went very slowly. But at some point, he started having less and less accidents. I switched up the candy to skittles.  And then, I figured out what really made my son tick. It was he needed a BIG time incentive.  Right at that time KMart was having a huge toy sale.  I let him buy whatever toy he wanted. When we got home I put that toy on top the kitchen counter right where he could see it. Then I told him he could have it once he went a whole week with no accidents. It took two weeks before we opened that racetrack.  But it was worth every penny.  He still is not nighttime trained but we are working on it.

Jason turned 3 this past summer. I think I began dreading potty training him before I even finished with Tyler. I was so nervous on how it would go. His birthday was in July and I vowed I would have him trained by then. I tried in April over spring break. It was a complete failure. So I decided to wait until school ended. We had a bunch of activities the first couple of weeks so I waited until Catholic Camp was over. The very next week, we went out and purchased his big boy underwear and a BIG bag of M&M's. It wasn't going super quickly for him but after a week, he was good with no number 1 accidents.  But he kept pooping in his underwear. Ugh! So I pulled out the big guns. He had gotten a Thomas train set for Christmas which was sitting in the top of his bedroom closet. We told him once he was 100% no accidents, he could play with it.  Well what do you know? He didn't have any more accidents since then (of course for the one he had at my poor SIL's house and that was a doozy).  And last week he even became nighttime trained.

So I don't have any expert advice to offer here. But I suggest you approach it calmly. Try not to get mad at your child when they have an accident. And don't rush the process. You want them to be potty trained, you aren't trying to train yourself to remind them to go to the bathroom. It will happen. Just be patient.

 

Adapted from Apples to Peaches post I wrote in July 2011.