irishmomusa

The purpose of this blog post is not to pressure or compare your way or your child’s level of readiness to potty train but rather to just share my experience with this sensitive phase and how we approached the whole phase.

Loads of book, blogs and doctors say it can be done in three days if you stay at home with the child naked from the waist down and I really believe them and I’m sure it works for some people but not our family. There is no way on earth that we could stay at home without leaving the house for that long! Jonny and I would lose our minds and so would Harry!!

Honestly, it took a couple of tries. The first was when he was 2 years and 3 months old which was way too early for Harry. He was not ready at all. I also had my approach all wrong. I was nervous, doubted him and that did not help things at all. I had a little potty in the living room floor right in front of the TV for him to go when he pleased and anytime we were in the apartment, I would remove his nappy and have him sit watching his favorite TV show on the potty in the hope that he would go. Instead, he would eventually go in the hallway on the carpet by his bedroom while I was busy in the kitchen and not looking. After this happening several times, I decided to abandon the idea and try again later.

Someone told me that they had trained their boys at 2 years and 8 months so I decided to wait it out. In the meantime, I bought two new children’s books to read to Harry at story time before bed. One was ‘Everybody Potties’ and the other was “what is poop?’’’ ! On repeat we would read these books to him and he loved learning all about where poop goes after we flush the toilet and how different animals’ poop all looks different! I really think the preparation of reading about it helped him succeed. I also should attribute his potty which is so cute and looks just like a mini toilet that he still uses today and it even has a flush which I bought on Amazon here.

Child Sized Toilet with Flush from Amazon

Another piece of advice I was given by a dear friend, Sandy, who was a wonderful mother herself and advice that was the most memorable to me was her question ‘Where do you have his potty?’ When I answered that it was in the middle of the living room by his toys and the tv she laughed at me and asked “Would you go to the toilet in the middle of your living room?’’ This was my Eureka moment! I laughed and said no way. Of course we would never go in the middle of the living room so why should we expect our child to go there? Children deserve privacy and for their dignity to be protected too. After all, Harry would only go on the carpet away from us when we were not looking or around a corner. With that in mind, I placed the potty in the bathroom and that is where he eventually went for the first time in his potty! Maybe in the middle of the living room works for some children though but not for Harry.

We sometimes overlook the simple things. Children want to be just like adults so they love to mimic our actions and this goes with toilet time too. I also feel that I was ready and confident in the whole procedure and had decided that the bag of nappies in his bedroom was the last packet I was ever going to buy. I never put a nappy on him again during the day, instead just bought several pairs of underpants and shorts from Target and prepared for accidents for the next month or two which is exactly what happened!

With the last number of diapers, I put them on him going to bed for the first two weeks and after a week he would be waking up dry anyway so I risked putting him to bed without one. He had several accidents at night over the course of the training period but after about two months, he was no longer having accidents in the night! Having two twin beds really helped with this process but I’m sure you could set up another bed easily on the floor as there is nothing worse than dealing with all the wet beds at 4am half asleep. We used to quickly strip him , wipe him down and re dress him in pjs and put him straight into the other bed, dealing with the mess the next day!

Anyway, I’ll stop rambling now! Would love to hear your stories on how you potty trained your little one and what worked for you! That’s how we did it and not saying it’s the right way or the best way but it worked out just fine and allowed him to start Montessori School right on time at 3 years old as he was fully trained which you need to be to attend a Montessori Casa or Children’s House 3-6yrs Classroom.