I decided to potty train Asher the week before his second birth day. I had actually tried and failed miserably twice before that, largely due to the fact that both times I has spontaneously decided to potty train him with zero preparation and with no help. So this time, I decided I needed to call in the big guns. So I called up my second cousin in-law, Rachael, who has successfully potty trained 3 kids and got some pointers.
Here is what we did:
First I picked a weekend when Raf and I would both be home and that we didn’t have anything else going on. This is key, because you want two parents around during the first couple days (which are the hardest) to tag team the child, so you don’t get frustrated and give up. I also ordered LOTS of toddler underwear and training pants (I already had a potty chair and potty book). I stocked up on dairy free dark chocolate chips to serve as a reward/incentive and I also created a potty chart, with a column for pee and a column for poop and placed in a prominent spot on the fridge, which he would be able to put a sticker on and track his progress each time he successfully used the potty. Lastly, I got an egg timer to use to get him to stay sitting on the potty for a certain length of time.
As the weekend approached both Raf and I talked with Asher about how exciting it was that he was going to be able to start wearing undies and using the potty just like mommy and daddy. We also read him his potty book and took him to the bathroom to watch us go whenever we went. He was definitely interested in the process.
My plan was to go cold turkey with the diapers (except during nap and bed time).
As soon as I heard him wake up on Saturday morning, I bolted out of bed, whipped his diaper off of him and sat him on his potty. You see I had noticed that many mornings he woke up dry but would pee shortly after waking up, so I wanted to try to catch this first pee in the potty to help him understand what we were trying to accomplish. I set the egg timer for 1 minute…and nothing happened, BUT he still wanted to sit there so I set it for another minute and lo and behold he pee’d in the potty!!! Raf and I made a HUGE fuss about it, gave him a chocolate chip, let him put a sticker on his chart and even had him help flush the pee down the toilet. It was a serious stroke of luck, because now he understood what he needed to do.
For the rest of the weekend, Raf and I would have him sit on the potty every 30 minutes or so and he had many successes, but also many accidents. When the accidents happened we didn’t make a big deal of it, but would just have him help clean it up, though the mess was normally limited to his underwear and talk to him about trying to get it in the potty next time. He caught on quickly. He soon was telling us when he has to go and his chart was covered in stickers.
Pooping was another issue altogether. It’s not that he was having accidents, but rather he was nervous about pooping on the potty, but also didn’t want to soil his undies. This lead to some very dramatic and wriggly productions, where he would run around the room whining, needing to poop but not wanting to, until he couldn’t hold it any longer and would run and sit on the potty. But it was so painful to watch, the poor guy was clearly in distress and if it weren’t for our high fiber diet I’m sure he would have become constipated. Luckily he got over his anxiety after a week or so.
Whenever I went out with him, I’d have him use the potty before we left, and I’d bring several changes of undies and pants along with us. I’d then have him use the potty when we reached our destination. I put a plastic bag and a small towel on the seat of his car seat to protect the seat from accidents, but luckily, to this day he has never had one in the car.
About a month after we started potty training him we moved into a new house and the first night we spent there we had a major poop accident. There was poop on my arm, the floor, and even the wall. Don’t ask. He was so distressed by this event that after that for several weeks he would only poop in his diaper while he was sleeping.
It’s now been 3 months and it’s still a work in progress. I’d say he’s mostly potty trained but not entirely there. He still waits until he has pee’d in his undies a little first before telling us he has to pee. He’s much better with pooping, but he goes back and forth between pooping in the potty every time to pooping exclusively in his diaper while he sleeps for a couple weeks. He often wakes up from nap or bedtime dry, but it’s not consistent enough yet for us to do away with diapering altogether. We still need to remind him to use the potty whenever we see him doing his little wiggly, ‘I really need to go’ dance. When asked if he has to go potty he nearly always replies “No pee-pee potty.” He is not to be trusted. But we have long since retired the potty sticker chart as well as the chocolate chips. We still make a big deal about it whenever he successfully tells us he has to use the potty before wetting his undies or when he poops in the potty. He now almost exclusively uses the regular toilet (without a toddler seat by straddling the seat) and this has made clean up a lot easier.
He has even started insisting on going by himself and he makes everyone else leave the room. This is all very well and good, but he isn’t quite ready to go by himself entirely and still needs a bit of supervision. The other day I taught him how to do a ‘nature pee’ while we were at the park and the next day he insisted on using the toilet alone so I left him and after a few minutes I peaked back in, only to find him standing there with his pants around his ankles, holding is undies out (which were around his knees) and peeing right into them and all down his pants and onto the carpet. Other times when he’s insisted on being left alone, we return to find nearly a whole roll of toilet paper in the toilet, or sometimes the actual roll in it’s entirety. So I’ve taken to leaving him him a couple squares to wipe with and then taking the rest of the roll with me when I leave the room. It certainly has been and continues to be an adventure.
All in all despite still needing to remind him to go, it’s really nice to not have two kids in full diapers.
