So you’re going to teach your little human how to ditch the diapers. There are books to read, entire blogs dedicated to potty training, and Facebook groups with dozens of posts a day. It can be overwhelming, to say the least, like virtually every other parenting milestone.
After racking up a fair amount of diaper-free days (and a lesser amount of pull-up free nights — more on that later), I can tell you it’s simply another thing to move through, and regardless of how long or hard it is, remember that one day it will be over, one way or another. Here are some things I learned along the way
1.Pick the Right Time.
Start too early and it will take you forever, with rivers of excrement running through your house. Start too late and you may as well invest in enough pull-ups to get them through college. Also you can’t start before or after Christmas, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, your birthday, your spouse’s birthday, while you have a big project at work, before, during, or after a vacation, or when kiddo is dealing with any other milestone in their life.
Kidding! The ages of 18–24 months are often thrown around, and it’s a good general time. Just know that earlier can certainly work, and later is fine with most kids too. I tried potty training at around 17 months the first time. It was actually going okay, until I faced my first day out with no diaper. What if he peed on the way there? Where was the nearest bathroom? How does anyone possibly do this?!
I chickened out and put the diapers back on. When I tried again five months later, we made it all the way through. I’m pretty sure we would have made it the first time too. In between, I put diapers back on to send him to preschool and when someone came to visit. It didn’t seem to affect anything. Which leads me to my next point…
2. Be Brave.
This works on many levels, but in the example above, I had to just take a deep breath and walk out the door one day with no diapers. I brought plastic bags and extra clothes and piles of wet wipes, but no diapers. No guts, no glory.
The same goes for the first day you try this. We went with the naked (or pantsless) method for a few days in a row. I blocked off our carpeted living room as best I could and turned kiddo lose on the hardwood floors and tiles. It was mostly successful. Have carpet cleaner on hand. And bleach. But honestly, a little toddler poop on your floor is gonna be less gross than your newborn’s worst blowout was.
3. It will probably take longer than you think…or not.
My kiddo is stubborn and opinionated and extroverted and totally lacking in chill. I was prepared for battle. I read all the books. I had two potty chairs. I blocked off time and blocked off the living room. I bought small rewards to give along the way. This was not going to be fun. There are no winners in war.
And then five days later it was over. He was entertained by being able to turn around at look at his own poop. The potty chairs were his domain. He loved being naked all day. That first day we ventured into the world, and virtually every day after, there were no incidents.
Your super-chill kid may insist on pooping in diaper until she’s four. Your normally hyper-vigilant child may have totally random pee accidents for years. We didn’t figure out nighttime peeing until kiddo was 5, because…
4. Your kid is your kid, and they’re like no other kid.
Any time you think you’re doing something wrong, you can probably actually blame your kid. Each one is unique. So-called “fool-proof” rules work great for some, horrible for others. Speaking of which…
Now, the single best real-world potty training tip I ever learned. Seriously. Ready?
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There are people who carry around a portable potty chair and disposable bags with them everywhere at this point in the process. If that’s how you wanna do it, that’s cool. But I was a city mom, often walking long distances or taking the bus or train places. No way was I going to schlep a potty chair along with me.
It seems brilliant to some parents and weird or gross to others. The biggest issue we had out in the world is that my kiddo felt so unstable sitting on a grownup size toilet that it always upset him. So I took one leg out of his pants and sat him facing the toilet tank. He could put his hands on the tank for balance. That part of the toilet is sort of squared off, which makes for even more stability. It is especially helpful for little boys, who tend to pee right out into the world when sitting frontways on a toilet seat. This way, everything is aimed down.
If you’re grossed out by your kid touching the back of the toilet, give it a good wet-wipedown first. Also, you’re gonna wash their hands anyways, right? Right?!
I’ve even heard you can give them dry erase markers to draw on the tank, especially if they’re shy about their business. Since I mostly used this technique in public bathrooms, I never tested that one out. I did sometimes give him a toy car to drive around on the tank. Yes, they might drop it in the toilet. Yes, they are going to cry about that. Yes, it happened to me. Yes, I might have considered going in after it (pre-poop) if we weren’t in a fancy sort of portapotty that basically just had a hole he dropped his car straight down.
Shit happens.
5. Ask for help. Then ask for more. Then keep asking until you get what you need.
Frankly, I could call this the single best piece of parenting advice, period.
In this case, although daytime potty training came pretty easily, night training did NOT. We tried waking him to pee once a night, twice a night, at 10 and 2, then at 11 and 3. We left the pull-ups off so he would wake up when he was wet. We danced naked under the full moon. Nothing helped. The general advice is to start working on night time potty training when your kid is dry more often than not. For us that happened…never.
Everything I’d read told me not to worry about it until he was at least 8. That your pediatrician wouldn’t even talk to you about it until then. But we had an excellent pediatrician, and I thought it wouldn’t hurt to bring it up.
He told me that a bed-wetting alarm was the only thing that really helped older kids, and we should go ahead and give it a try. He also asked me if kiddo was constipated. “On and off,” I answered. He told me that even a little bit of constipation can put enough pressure on a little kid’s bladder to make them unable to hold it.
So we tried the bed-wetting alarm. It’s pretty sensitive, and we could usually make it into his room before a full bed change was needed, which was helpful. But after a week of midnight wakeups, I was losing faith. I hadn’t done well with nighttime stuff when he was a baby, and I wasn’t doing well 5 years later. A bit of research suggested that he was actually a bit young for the alarm. We weren’t seeing any progress, although it apparently usually takes EIGHT TO TWELVE WEEKS to work. No way would I make it that long.
Then I remembered the doctor’s offhand comment about constipation. He had recommended I get Miralax and give kiddo a half dose every day. So I did exactly that.
Three days later kiddo stopped wetting the bed completely and totally, never to go back again.
Who knew?
My doctor, that’s who. No person in your life is infallible. Some pediatricians give cruddy advice. Some mother-in-laws really know their stuff. You may have to keep asking until you get whatever it is you and your unique little human need.
You do you, poo.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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