We have three kids with three very different personalities. They also took three very different paths to potty training.
Potty Training Your Child in One Day Method
I was never interested in struggling with my child over potty training, so we never started at a young age. My oldest expressed an interest in going to the potty at 18 months, and he went a few times before he abandoned the entire process and showed no interest for months afterward.
Finally, the month before he turned 3, we were desperate. He was scheduled to start preschool at 3 and had to be potty trained. Out of desperation, I bought the book Potty Train Your Child in One Day and bought a potty doll, made the doll Thomas the Train underwear, bought M & M’s, sent my husband away and had a potty training day.
In this method you and your child spend the morning watching potty videos, reading potty books, and training the doll to go potty. The child takes a nap, and when he wakes up, it’s time to train him to go potty. You pump him full of liquids and teach him to go. The entire time you’re creating a fun, party environment for him. Even though the process can be exhausting for a parent, by the end of the day our son was completely potty trained and had only a handful of accidents after that.
This method is perfect for a parent with one child or someone who is willing to invest a full day for potty training.
Wait Until They Are Old Enough Method
My second child adamantly refused to use the potty, even after she was 3. Though I knew she should be potty trained, my days were busy with two kids only 17 months apart, so I let it slide. Finally, when she was 3.5 years old, I insisted she use the bathroom. She must have been ready because from that day forward, she used the potty and only had a few accidents.
The Bribery Method
My third child was perhaps the most frustrating to train. Because she had grown up watching her brother and sister go, she expressed interest in using the potty at around 2. By 2.5 years old, she had turned it into a game. She would go potty for an entire day with no accidents, and then the next day, she would take pleasure in looking at me, smiling, saying “I’m going potty” and go in her pull up with no attempt to use the bathroom.
We repeated this cycle every day. One day she went all day, the next day she made no attempt and went in her pull ups (and delighted in frustrating me). Finally, in early January when she was 2 years and 9 months, I decided to bribe her. Every time she went potty she would get one Surfs Sweets dye free jelly bean.
Bribery worked like a charm, and within 4 days she was wearing underwear and going every day and even waking us up at night to go. Since she has been trained, she has only had one accident. The hard part was weaning her off the jelly beans.
There you have it, three kids, three different potty training methods. I don’t know which method is best; I think it largely depends on your child and what motivates him. However, I can’t tell you how excited I am to be done with diapers, though I do miss having babies.
I shared this post at Works for Me Wednesday.
Photo courtesy of thomasrdotrog via flickr
We have 4 kids who have been potty trained. Their experiences with it were all a little different. My boys though mostly trained when they were 3 or a couple months later. The training went quickly. Two preferred the candy bribe method, while one loved having a sticker chart. I started my daughter when she was just over 2.5 years. She is/was a very compliant child, so I thought she was ready. She did catch on quickly, but she also had a few more accidents than the boys, which I attribute to starting her at a younger age.
Of course, all the kids went through phases after their training where they would hold it too long or not want to go in a public bathroom, etc…, but eventually these things pass.
The one thing I did not do with any of the kids was to use pull ups. For the first week of training, I put them in a diaper at night, but it would come off first thing in the morning. After a week at most, I put them in underwear at night. There might have been a few accidents, but since they were ready to be potty trained (and had no other bodily issues), I felt there was no need to pull ups.
Our 3.5 year old was introduced via the ‘one day’ approach. He didn’t get it at all in the morning and went through at least half a dozen pairs of underpants. After nap, he suddenly got it and has been good. That said, he still wears diapers at nap or overnight as he does let go when he’s sleeping. The doctor says that you have to just talk to him about it and he’ll get there when he’s good and ready. Even if he falls asleep for 20 minutes in his car seat on a ride home from somewhere, we usually have a mess to clean up. Our daughter is 20 months and while she hasn’t started, she already stays relatively dry through at least 75% of her overnights and naps, so she’ll probably master aspect quite effectively once she gets trained.
I was pretty laid back about it, so I guess you could say we use the “wait until they are ready” approach, and it was about 3 1/2 for both boys. Not ideal. We mentioned it and the “bribes” were out there if they chose to accept, but we didn’t push it too hard. The positive thing is that it’s an all or nothing thing and we didn’t go through any accident stage, except at night when we never did pull ups, so there were a few bed-wetting nights.
I only have one child. Here’s what worked for us with toilet training. I agree with Natalie that not using pull-ups speeds up the process. If peeing in your pants means getting all your clothes wet and making a big mess, it’s much easier to understand why you need to use the potty instead. A child who’s doing it to exert control (like yours was) may find that helping to clean up the puddle takes all the fun out of it!
But a lot of control issues can be defused by setting up a reward scheme that makes it clear to the child that SHE is deciding to use the potty. We did a sticker chart, but candy is the same basic idea.