Hellobee

I’m going to give you the punch line of this post first: I don’t recommend potty training a toddler until they’re showing signs that they’re for-sure ready and you’ve packed a bag full of patience for your journey (which does not last for only three days.) This has been the least parenting fun I’ve had! With that being said, I thought I’d share how our potty training adventure is going and what we did to get it started.

We started potty training by getting Little M interested in the toilet and what goes on in the bathroom very early. We started an open-door policy right around when M started crawling. When we went to the bathroom he was allowed, and even encouraged to watch. Around his first birthday I bought this Baby Bjorn potty seat. (Tip: check out Craigslist or your local mom network for a used seat since they’re very easy to sanitize.) Before bath each night we would sit Little M on the little potty and then Mr. S or I would sit with our pants down on the big toilet next to him. Folks, this is a swallow-the-pride moment for the greater good; toddlers are all about mimicking! By the time Little M was 16 months old, he was consistently going pee on the potty before his bath each night.

At 21 months Little M started to tell me when he was peeing or pooping in his diapers. He doesn’t talk as much as kids his age, but he’d point to his privates and say “ssss.” I’d say, “are you peeing?” and he’d laugh, which is his way of saying yes. I was in tune with the face he’d make when pooping and started to successfully whisk him off to the potty and catch some or all of the poop in the potty. We had successfully shown Little M that his poop and pee go in the potty.

Just before Little M turned 22 months old, a friend with two boys aged 4.5 and 2.5 stayed with us for a weekend. When she saw Little M tell me that he needed to poop by saying “ssss,” she encouraged me to embrace this interest in elimination and to take a stab at potty training. One week later, we committed to ditching the diapers forever.

We loosely followed the three day potty training method, which I’d learned about from a friend. I gave Little M as much to drink as he wanted and then set a timer to go to the potty every 30 minutes. We kept him in his cloth diapers and had three accidents. On the second day I switched to training underwear and took him every hour. We had two accidents. On the third day I took him every hour again and only had once accident. During this time, and still now, I reminded him often to, “keep your underwear dry.”

On day four Little M and I went to Target together and picked out a package of little boys’ underwear together.  He’s very conscientious of keeping his “choo-choos” dry. He wears them during the day except for nap and during the first few weeks for classes (music and tumbling) when he wore training underwear, which hold about one pee’s worth of liquid. By week four he was in undies all the time except naps.

The beginning of our potty training period happened to fall directly after Halloween. Little M went trick-or-treating and accumulated quite the stash of candy, which he was eager to eat. So I did what many methods advise you do not do – I told him that he could have a piece of “happy Halloween candy” if he made a poo-poo on the potty. Halloween candy was his motivator; we haven’t had a daytime poop accident yet! (knock on wood) But because Little M usually poops in the evening just before bed, I now tell him that if he keeps his underwear dry all day, he can have a piece of candy before bath and teeth brushing.

So that’s the good. Little M is day trained; by week four we really got into a groove. We’ve gone days at a time without any accidents and only once has he had a day with more than one accident.  Now for the bad….

1.    He didn’t consistently tell me when he needed to go for the first several weeks
2.    He sometimes says “no” when I ask if he needs to go and he really does
3.    He usually won’t go on demand before we leave the house
4.    He’s petrified of public restrooms
5.    He usually poops in the evening and it can sometimes take hours to be finished with the potty
6.    He’s going to the bathroom in his pull-up at night or in the morning

I’ve washed and stripped all our diapers in preparation to pack them away; I’m committed to the potty. So this is how we’re handing the negatives so far.

He doesn’t consistently tell me when he needs to go / He says “no” when I ask if he needs to go

I ask Little M often if he needs to go to the potty and he usually responds, “no.” However, if he hesitates, laughs a little or says “sss” in response, I whisk him off to the potty. Oftentimes he’ll cry in frustration and I’ll say, “let’s just try to make pee-pee on the potty and then we’ll go play.” Or if he said “sss” and then when I asked if he needed to go potty and responded “no,” I’ll say “you said ‘sss’, you told mummy you needed to go potty, now let’s sit down and go pee.”

I’d say this technique has a 75% success rate.

He won’t go before we leave the house / He’s petrified of public restrooms

I go to the bathroom before leaving the house, always. So I’m modeling the behavior I want, but Little M will not consistently go on demand. The problem is, we get to music class, for example, and 30 minutes after he refused to use the potty, he’s telling me he needs to go!

I bought a travel potty recommended by friends, but either it or the public bathroom scares him to death. It’s now to the point that I cannot even use a public restroom if he’s with me! So I bought another full-sized potty and put it in the back of my SUV. I had it on the seat next to him, but he was telling me he needed to go constantly – power of suggestion I suppose. I carry a roll of very absorbent paper towels with me to clean up the pee from the potty on the go. One or two soak up the pee, I drop them in a grocery bag, toss it and wipe my hands and the potty down with a hand sanitizer wipe.

He poops in the evening and can take hours to be ready for bed

At first I don’t think the whole two-hour-long evening potty routine was a bedtime delay tactic. I think he truly wanted to make sure he made all his pee-pee and poo-poo on the potty. We modified the evening routine to make bath time even earlier at 5:30pm. That way by 6pm we were sitting on the bathroom floor, he on the potty, and me next to him reading books. We have 5 little trucks next to his potty and we will drive them around and around and around on my legs until he goes to the bathroom. I think the repetition might help him focus and relax???

I’ve been working to help him go poop in the morning instead of the evening by speeding up the bedtime routine and giving him three prunes just after bath and before I brush his teeth. This seems to get things going over night and is helping time-shift his body. Which leads to the last issue…

He goes to the bathroom in his pull-up at night or in the morning

I never used to go into Little M’s room at night for fear of waking him. But over the past few weeks I’ve gone in to his room before I go to bed to confirm that the poo appearing in his pull-up in the morning isn’t there all night (aka the whiff test, ewww.) Since it seems to be a morning issue, over the past few days I’ve started telling him that if he poops in his underwear at night, he cannot have any “happy” the next day (happy = Halloween candy). And for the past few days this approach has worked! I know I’d be crazy to think it will continue to work, but a girl can dream.

We’ve decided to continue with pull-ups for nighttime use just because it’s not a good time for us to night-train. Our house is under construction and there aren’t toilets convenient to Little M’s room. However, I think most of his issues arise when he first wakes up. So I’ve started sleeping with the monitor on and as soon as I hear him stir, I go in and get him up to use the potty. The three-day method recommends taking them to the potty one hour after they’ve fallen asleep and then again one hour before they normally wake up. I don’t know a single parent who wants to wake up an hour earlier, so night training isn’t really high on my to-do list right now!

I’m surprised at how quickly Little M understood the potty. I’m also surprised at how stressful the process has been for me. I know it’s just a pair of underwear and pants that can be washed after an accident, but the thought of accidents when we’re out makes me anxious. And the epic evening poo sessions sitting on a cold, dark bathroom floor (we had no heat or electricity in the upstairs bathroom) nearly made me lose my mind. I’m glad we took Little M’s lead when he showed interest in using the potty, but I definitely wouldn’t have chosen 22 months as the ideal time to potty train a toddler.

If you’ve been through this, was potty training your least favorite parenting task too? If not, are you planning to follow any potty training method? Will you follow LO’s lead or take matters into your own hands when you’re feeling ready?