Parenting

My oldest was easy, we just brought the potty chair into the living room and removed the diaper, and she figured it out fairly quickly. Supposedly girls are easier than boys though.

My youngest, he has been a real headache. Having other kids around makes the whole just not wearing pants and peeing in the living room thing a bit more difficult. He's starting to get it now, at five, but it's been a long road of positive reinforcement. Finding the right treats was essentially the key, and now it's routine. Like a dog!

So I guess-
Girls: Make it convenient for them.
Boys: Train them like a dog.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yeah, that was a bit difficult with junior - but in another way. At the age of 5 he used the toilet but for reasons (nostalgia perhaps) he refused to flush. We were greeted daily with unflushed turds.

So I upgraded his pocketmoney to 70 Cents and presented him this web-app I wrote on our family tablet:

"See, you now will get 70 Cents at the end of the week"

His face was filled with glory.

"Now you didn't flush today, see what happens." I said while pressing the coin and turning it to a turd and reducing his amount to 60 Cents.

By the end of the week I never had to show him this app ever again. Call me cruel.

We didn’t force it. Bought the potty and “big boy” underwear. He was excited to try them at first but ultimately wanted to go back to diapers. We kept the potty out and continued to ask him if he wanted to try underwear. Eventually (several months later) he warmed up to the potty and the switch to underwear soon followed. This happened maybe a couple months after his peers—but we never had a single accident and we didn’t have to do any traumatic training. It was a very smooth transition.

Both girls we waited for a stretch of 2-3 days where we had no plans. Both right before their second birthday. We'd get them naked and explained the training potty and why we use the potty. We asked if they wanted to be big girls and then told them this is how.

The trick was that because they are naked they tend to feel more in touch with their body and less likely to have an accident. Neither of them peed anywhere but the toilet.

When they used the toilet, we would explode with celebration and praise them to the moon every time they went.

Neither of them had any more than 2 or 3 accidents. They both learned within days.

But every kid is different. If one thing doesn't work, try another.

I tried to do EC (elimination communication) but wasn't super successful, but it did mean my daughter was very used to sitting on a mini potty regularly well before we did "proper" potty training with big potty. About a month before 2nd birthday got a book about potty training from the library, and then spent a weekend pants free, and she got it very quickly. Got poops a lot faster than pee though, she only had maybe 2 poops in a nappy after her 2nd birthday, but I had to keep putting nappies on for longer drives or trips because she just wouldn't tell me she needed to pee. She was pretty much fully toilet trained by 3, but has had a couple of accidents, 2 bed wetting one end of day at childcare. Not sure about those but not too worried about it.

With my daughter she was absolutely terrified of falling into the big potty. We got to her use the training potty fairly easy by just making it available, but couldn't get her to transition to the big potty. We got it to work by taking the small lid off the training potty and putting it over the seat on the big potty and she then felt safe enough to start using it. Overall it was a bit of a fight, but she's been using it for over a year now, and all has been good since.

we're on day one with my 23 month old, so i don't have any sage wisdom about it really. but i'll go over what we're doing, since it's not a disaster (yet)

• we prepared well in advance, read the book twice (oh crap potty training)
• it's a stern, cold turkey, end to diapers. we explained what we're doing in plain language and did our best to speak with confidence and directness and emphasize that we're here to help. we're doing night training at the same time as day training in hopes it will not show weakness in our approach
• we bought a mini pot for each floor of the house so there's always one sorta nearby + a seat for the big toilet (he hasn't used it yet but he knows what it's for). introduce the kid to it early if you want but make sure they know it isn't a toy, it's only for serious business
• i think it's important to not wait to long, the book said 30 months(?) was too long - they'll start to have discovered power manipulation at that age i guess, and make it difficult. at my kid's age he's still really eager to impress us and not play games about it too much

Every kid is different.

Girls are usually easier than boys.

My son was difficult. Used candy as positive reinforcements. He could have cared less. I think he used it as a form of control. ADHD was a factor and it was hard to switch gears to pee.

My daughters were pretty easy. Put the easter candy up when one was 2. She insisted that she was owed candy after her first visit. Practically done right there.

Bed wetting is not the aa

Get a rubber mattress protector pad. Have lots of patience. Don’t be afraid to delay night training if they aren’t ready. My understanding is that our bodies use hormone pathways to control bladder at night and those aren’t fully developed until as late as 5 years old.

Try not to make your kid anxious about it. They see you on the toilet, they are interested in going just like you eventually, it may not show at first. All three of my children potty trained at different times. Even our twins.

As long as you stick with it, they won’t be pissing themselves when they are 18, just remember that.

Now for advice on how to do it. We went bottomless the first couple days. Your child probably will prefer to be covered up and so letting them know that making it in the potty means they can get their big kid underwear is usually good motivation. After you feel comfortable putting them in underwear just be on them every 30 minutes to go potty. Give them the control to be able to say “I don’t have to go” once but not twice. Once they go awhile without an accident then you can move on to allowing them more skips.

It takes awhile to do. Don’t get discouraged

Rubber sheets

Every hour sit on potty for 10 seconds. No diapers - have to get that wet feeling and diapers wick it away. Training pants are thicker underwear. That helps. Communicate with daycare and do same strategy

We're potting training our daughter (2) now and she's instantly taken to it, we've barely had to do anything. We've just left her nappy off, left the potty in the room and she's just taken to it right away, giving her lots of praise when she uses it. She poos and pees in it without us having to really tell her to do anything.

It's a HUGE contrast to when we were potty training our son. It was an absolute nightmare and took years. He'd flat out refuse to acknowledge he needed a poo or had one in his nappy. At 3 he suddenly declared he didn't want to wear his nappy anymore, which was fine, and he did start to use the potty for wee's totally fine, but pooing was a different story. He'd end up holding it in for a week at a time, but kept dirtying his underwear, so we were changing his underwear about 8 to 10 times a day and constantly washing them, but he wouldn't acknowledge he'd done it.